Interreality Modalities: A Conversation with Artist Mieke Marple on Bridging the Digital and Traditional Worlds

Alida Sun, Southern Gothic Love Letters to My NSA Agent, 2023, courtesy of the artist, bitforms gallery, and PR for Artists. Image by Joshua White


interview by Coco Dolle

NFT Tuesday LA co-founder and former Night Gallery co-owner, Mieke Marple is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer determined to navigate what she calls the “insurmountable chasm” between the physical and digital art worlds. 

In her passionate mission to reconcile both the analog and the digital, Mieke has recently curated an impressive exhibition titled Interreality, showcasing 35 artists from the pioneering digital space mixed in with traditional established artists. Produced by Steve Sacks, founder of bitforms gallery and Aubrie Wienholt, founder of PR for Artists, Interreality is simply a tour de force. 

A kindred spirit and peer curator, I was thrilled to interview Mieke to speak about the exhibition as we tackled notions of provenance, embodied experiences, collecting art and feminism. 

COCO DOLLE: The recent groundbreaking exhibition at LACMA, Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age was enlightening on the symbiotic formation of tech and art. Tell us how your curation took inspiration from this show and about how it led to the making of Interreality.

MIEKE MARPLE: This exhibition was such an important moment in the digital art community, with the legacies of computer-based art, which had always been on the fringe before, finally getting canonized. These thematic, institutional shows are really important, but they can make artists feel sectioned off from the larger conversation and that's what I really wanted to do with this show. To have digital art be more seamlessly integrated with the larger, more mainstream conversation. 

DOLLE: Artists reacting to the world they're living in integrating new technologies with new tools. There was really no equivalent to this show in New York. Two years ago, MoMA had a drawing exhibition titled Degree Zero, illuminating new visual languages in midcentury art. I was extremely pleased to see works by Vera Molnar along with Louise Bourgeois. And what about your choice of venue, a 15,000-square-foot space strategically located near LACMA. Was it a raw space when you found it?  

MARPLE: Yes, it’s a hundred-year-old building. The owners recently gutted and retrofitted it and that's why it was available. It wasn't even rental ready. It didn't have outlets, or even real walls, or anything like that. But it's interesting to hear you say that this discourse with digital or computer-based art is further along in LA than New York. LACMA has definitely helped pave the way there. 

DOLLE: Yes they also hosted Paris Hilton spearheading a digital artwork fund by LACMA supporting women artists last year.

MARPLE: Yeah, totally. The other thing about this show is that I really wanted it to have a feminist umbrella, and besides just having feminist artists in the show, which is one way of doing that, I wanted to tell this story about artists from different generations who’ve influenced each other in a very non-linear and intuitive way.

DOLLE: So, who are you considering feminist artists in Interreality? Even if they don’t proclaim themselves as such, I believe the work of Oona is triggering deep conversations on body politics and the perception of women in society.

MARPLE: Alida Sun, I would say for sure. Connie Bakshi. I would say I'm a feminist artist. Jen Stark, Aya, Mark Flood, Cindy Phoenix identifies as a feminist artist. Ellie Pritz, of course, and Lindsey Price. Christine Wang, obviously. Aureia Harvey. I would say almost all of them. 

DOLLE: What about Claudia Hart?

MARPLE: Oh, yeah, of course, Claudia Hart!  

DOLLE: I love that it has this underlying statement, a feminist show in disguise.

MARPLE: I wanted it to be a feminist show, but I didn't want to do a show that's just women and non-binary artists. I did that already at Vellum LA when I co-curated Artists Who Code. I wanted to do a show that's just more inclusive. 

DOLLE: How did you bring all these artists together? From a curatorial standpoint, I work with artists I feel close to, their aesthetics and the conversation they engage with. It seems that you were also looking for a sort of balance.

MARPLE: I worked closely with Steve Sacks of bitforms gallery and Aubrie Wienholt of PR for Artists, who produced the show together. They brought a lot of artists they knew to the curatorial table. Even Savannah who works for Aubrie recommended a lot of artists that I ended up including. But yeah, I wanted there to be as many traditional artists as digital artists, as many women and/or non-binary artists as men. I wanted to pair artists with big social media followings like Jen Stark or Parker Day with artists that aren’t as well known. I wanted artists that were more established with more emerging artists. Abstraction with figuration. Slick with punk. Dry with wet and juicy. I feel like that's the main concept of the show: just a kind of harmony of modalities where nothing is super dominant over anything else.

DOLLE: What about embodied experience? You are showing artists engaged with new technologies and with a sensibility of the physical space but we're also looking at screens. So how do you put this together as experiential?

MARPLE: I would go to NFT shows and I would see all this work on the same size screen, the same orientation at the same height, and it would just homogenize the work. And then I would go to traditional art world shows, and there'd just be paintings. Just hung on the wall, and I would be like, does this really reflect reality? Is this really talking about the world I live in today? Because it doesn't feel like it. I think art's job is to be a sort of mirror to the world we live in so that we can have critical discussions about it. And then, having come from Night Gallery and putting on like a hundred shows and having worked with amazing artists like Samara Golden, who really knows how to create an experience in space, I wanted to put on a show where the installation was an art piece in and of itself.  

DOLLE: I love that. 

MARPLE: The show itself is an artwork. And then, there's artworks inside that larger artwork.

Mieke Marple, Dn't Ask Why, 2023, courtesy of the artist, bitforms gallery, and PR for Artists. Image by Joshua White

upside down iridescent purple heart sculpture wrapped in pink rope

Adam Parker Smith, Shibari Heart, 2022, courtesy of the artist, bitforms gallery, and PR for Artists. Image by Joshua White

DOLLE: It’s so important to be creative with the physical space when exhibiting digital works. I feel particularly NFT galleries need to be less linear and more creative with their presentation and aesthetics. Looking at screens in a white wall gallery space isn’t at all mesmerizing.

MARPLE: Just to explain that further, when I say the show itself is an artwork I mean that I want there to be something magical and seductive about every part of it. And also for every part of it to have a critical underpinning. For example, we used metal studs to create see-through walls and it's almost impossible to look at one work by itself. Whenever you're looking at a work, you're also looking through the wall and seeing the back of another work and some other works just feet away. It's emphasizing just how connected we are; how all the works are.

DOLLE: It sounds like a collage when we speak about it like that! 

MARPLE: Yeah, it's almost like a collage in a space made of multiple artworks. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, right?  These artworks are almost literally overlapping each other in space and creating surprising moments and connections, and that’s really exciting. 

DOLLE: Are all the pieces for sale? 

MARPLE: Oh, yes. (laughs) It's a selling show. But you know, it is interesting that my partner, after he saw the show, he told me that it really felt like a biennial, which I thought was interesting. Maybe that's just the scale, but I think there's more to it than that. What’s interesting about survey shows is the concept is usually very, very broad if there is one, but basically it's just a kind of temperature taking. What kind of art are people making right now? And, I think that's what this show is too. It's taking the temperature of the art landscape … and not just in LA. There are some artists in New York, Chicago, Miami, in London, in Berlin, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Rome. So, it's pretty international.

DOLLE: What was the audience’s response? Was it a super LA scene? A more digital art scene? Any noticeable criticisms from the traditional art world?

MARPLE: At the opening, I would say there was more people from the digital art world than the traditional art world, which is definitely something that I want to change because I feel like the traditional art world is who could benefit most from exposure to this show. The other thing I noticed was, like, a lot of the work is more interactive. My pieces have AR. So does Lindsey Price’s, and you have to scan a QR code and use your phone to activate it. OONA’s was participatory. Alida Sun’s had a live digital sensor. So, there was a lot of participatory work, which goes hand in hand with the Web3 ethos, you know, where the line between artist and collector can get blurry, and co-creating is a very popular idea.

DOLLE: Artists and collectors are more hand in hand in web3, indeed. I have recently collected more works in web3 than in contemporary arts. 

MARPLE: Right, but I noticed that a lot of people were hesitant. There wasn't as much participation as I hoped. I was talking to Alida Sun after the opening and I just realized that people are so trained to have this passive relationship to art.

So many people expect art to behave like a painting, right? It hangs there. You sort of appreciate it and then you move on. There's not a lot of interaction, or co-creation, or anything. I just realized there has to be a lot more education around this, that art is more than paintings, and an audience’s relationship to art can be more than just a passive one. Alida reminded me that this is a movement, you know. It’s bigger than me or this show.

DOLLE: Yes, the human impulse. You understand the collector's psychology and its attachment to the uniqueness of non fungibility. With NFTs, digital art could finally have the same one-of-a-kindness as a painting. What about traditional art collectors? 

MARPLE: I think a lot of traditional art collectors are intimidated or wary of collecting digital art. I wanted to take away some of the intimidation factor by showing all the different kinds of work seamlessly side by side. I wanted to show where there was something for everybody. Like, maybe you would come in as a painting lover, but you would leave having seen your first painting with AR or digital work made with AI and that would expand your ideas about art. 

 

Auriea Harvey, Gray Matter III, 2023, courtesy of the artist, bitforms gallery, and PR for Artists. Image by Joshua White

 

Interreality, curated by Mieke Marple, is on view through November 25 @ The Desmond Tower 5500 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles with a special performance event, today, November 18 from 6-9 pm.

Nothing New: An Interview of Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo)

full look: Gucci


interview by Vivian Crockett
photography by Hadi Mourad
creative direction by Alec Charlip
styling by Jamie Ortega
makeup by Tayler Treadwell
hair by Rachel Polycarpe
florals by Christina Allen
production: BORN Artists

Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, known by the pseudonym Puppies Puppies, is revolutionizing trans and Indigenous visibility through her critically-acclaimed conceptual works of sculpture and performance art. Despite a very genuine and personal embodiment within the work, an air of mystery once shrouded her identity as she initially insisted on a level of anonymity rarely exhibited by artists, particularly of her generation. In late 2017, however, this shifted with the very first reference to the artist’s gender transition taking place in her Green (Ghosts) installation at Overduin & Co. in Los Angeles. Kuriki-Olivo and her then-boyfriend lived in the gallery during the hours it was closed, leaving only traces of their existence during the hours it was open. Here, she taped two estrogen pills to the wall, pointing toward her gender-affirming course of hormone therapy—a subtle gesture that gently opened the door of visibility. Employing the mundane, everyday objects that surround her life is a hallmark of Puppies Puppies’ practice and readymades are one of her favorite ways to reference the art historical canon. An initial easter egg of visibility has since swung the door open to a state of consensual voyeurism in Nothing New, her current solo exhibition at the New Museum where the artist is occupying the Lobby Gallery with nearly constant access to her comings and goings via video surveillance, live stream access, and glass walls overlooking a recreation of her bedroom. Puppies Puppies also points to elements of her multi-ethnic indigeneity—Taíno on her father’s side and Japanese on her mother’s—with the inclusion of objects and spiritual practices that connect her disparate lineages in a form of what the exhibition’s curator, Vivian Crockett, refers to as a memoryscape. Crockett got cozy in bed for her interview of Puppies Puppies on the eve of the exhibition’s inauguration to discuss their creative collaboration.

VIVIAN CROCKETT: What were you were thinking through when you proposed this name for the show?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: There's definitely layers to it. One major aspect of the discussion around trans identity is that many people think it's something that's very new, it's something that society has to get used to, but it's not. If we look at Indigenous cultures all over the world, there are all kinds of terms for people that weren't in the binary or were considered trans. I come from an art history background, so I'm really interested in homages, but also being critical of artwork. It was a very white cis art history that I learned. So, I really also play off that, which extends to different aspects of living too. The accentuation of certain things can have a cornucopia of meaning. I'm thinking about a lot of works throughout art history. Sometimes the criticism of the work that I do is, "this has been done before," but this is the criticism of a lot of work. A discourse happens when people reference other music within their music. There's a way of thinking about these things that go beyond originality or authenticity.

CROCKETT: There's a lot about this project that feels very much in line with work you’ve done in the past, but there's elements that relate to more recent years of medically transitioning. 

PUPPIES PUPPIES: With older performances, I was more concealing myself and hiding. Hiding my body, hiding any way of recognizing me. I've started to attribute more of it to body dysmorphia. It kept me from wanting to be seen. But it was also a part of my personality. Things just kind of blend together sometimes and it's hard to distinguish one from the other. As I started to transition, I was working at Trans Latin@ in Los Angeles, and spent that year really focusing on that. I felt like distancing myself from art in a way. But then, I was like, what if this is actually just an extension of my practice? And that was really exciting to me because you don't have to negotiate what you want to get out of life just because you haven't seen it in art. This exhibition really combines almost every different way that I've been working over the years, which is not easy. I often feel like painting is an observation of life, sculpture an observation of the body, or different aspects of existence. And this is very much related to observation through a performative lens. 

CROCKETT: I love curating the Lobby Gallery because it's at the ground level. It's the first space that people engage with and it was originally conceived as a free space in the institution. It's a space you see from the outside and you're taking the very framework of that space as a prompt for playing with hyper visibility. Why the recreation of your bedroom? What do the various layers of that particular space mean to you in the context of your work?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: This concept has evolved over the years. The first iteration that I presented at Overduin & Co. in Los Angeles was called Green (Ghosts). Me and my partner at the time moved all of the contents of our apartment into a gallery—including our bed and everything—and we lived with our dog in the space. We slept there, but then, as soon as the gallery opened, we left. So, no one really saw the same exhibition. So, that was one iteration. And then, this iteration is actually being there, present in front of people, and there is a device to change the opacity of the glass. At any time, I can decide whether it's more of a private or public moment. The bedroom has always been something that I've focused on. Anything that I’ve lived in constant proximity to somehow becomes incorporated into the work. As a trans woman, there are certain things that make me want to not go outside. I want to stay in and dream about what could be. I think there's an aspect of that to this by putting it on display as an artwork. 

dress: Ferragamo
headpiece: Piers Atkinson

dress: Puppets and Puppets
earring: Area
shoes: stylist’s own

CROCKETT: In the bedroom part of the space, instead of emptying out the contents of your apartment, we are duplicating what's in your room. I like that it's not one-to-one. We're not trying to make it exactly the same, but we're trying to replicate the feeling of it. Earlier, we were talking about this idea of Nothing New, and how there is so much of an art historical precedent to your work, I want to emphasize that this project is very much in dialogue with different artists who have recreated their living environments, or have brought that into an institutional space. But there's also the way in which you reframe a potentially hetero-masculinist idea of a post-minimalist practice. This is a different kind of iteration of site/non-site. We've talked a lot about how Félix Gonzàlez-Torres was one of our patron saints and your work is very much in that lineage. However, there’s a new connotation to the various kinds of conceptual maneuvers that your work does. For example, the way that the physical space of your bedroom is flanked by these two other vignettes that are inside your brain, like a memoryscape, part of which reference a real place too. You are not literally trying to recreate the [Ryōan-ji] garden; it's the feeling of that garden and what it represents to you. The torii gate and the garden help delineate the threshold of the sacred space of your bedroom. And then on the other side, we are not just witnessing; we are literally looking inside your brain with reproductions of the MRI scans.

PUPPIES PUPPIES: Yeah, that was spot on. With the bedroom being sandwiched between the rock garden and the CBD garden, the torii gate is a way of signifying that you're entering a sacred space based off the Shinto religion, which is the Indigenous religion of Japan. I'm very much drawn to Shintoism because animism is a part of it. There's this praising of nature and sacred places. There are torii gates in the middle of the sea, or in the middle of the forest just to show that this is a sacred place.

CROCKETT: Green has been a central “readymade” color in your practice for many years. I love that green is simultaneously this naturally occurring thing in the world in so many different forms but then also we have green money and green screens. Can you speak a little on the significance of this color to you?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: Sometimes, when something is so ubiquitous, it can resonate with people in totally different ways, which makes it highly accessible. I went with green because it's the color of plants, of what people think of as nature. My dad grew up in the rainforest in Puerto Rico, so a lot of the pictures he has given me were pure green images from his childhood, and so it had this resonance. But I thought about it also as the mixing of blue and yellow, which have natural connotations with the sky and the sun and the sand. Later on, I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and so I was thinking about this kind of literalism with sadness and happiness between those colors and about these moods intersecting.

full look: Acne Studios

dress: Kritika Manchanda

CROCKETT: This other piece that the show addresses is the ways that we integrate different modes of being on display—not only the IRL display but also the ways that we exist on the internet. There's an increased pressure for us to be available to others online and through our most intimate moments. I have a private Instagram account and I'm constantly navigating who I feel like giving access to the space because it is, in many ways, a professional platform. It is part of how my identity circulates in the world. But then, there's this level of self-censorship that happens. There are different codes of respectability that we are supposed to perform. So, there’s the practice of seeing your day-to-day activities through the glass as a screen, and the fact that it'll be fogged out at times. But then, there’s the surveillance cameras filming you in the space and the fact that someone in the museum might be able to watch you in real-time, and then also be looking at you through a monitor simultaneously, and then there’s a potential third loop if you activate the live stream from your computer at home or on your cell phone. Which one is more real, or which one do they consume first, or can they do all three (or even four) simultaneously? What gets lost? What gets amplified in that mise en abyme? 

PUPPIES PUPPIES: I think about that with social media because it’s mostly about trying to show your accomplishments, which I definitely participated in and was excited to participate in. You're sharing with people you love, as well as people you don't know, the things that you're doing and that you care about and what you're putting your life towards. But a part of me was like, what if I showed the boring, or the monotonous, or the in-between, or my worst? I was interested in showing all the different facets of existence, which is replicated in the show as well. There's going to be cameras within the bedroom of the museum, within my bedroom at home, and there'll be a camera recording what's going on out in the world when I go to an appointment or something that I can't miss. So, that accessibility is something that you sometimes grant to people who follow you—they know what you're doing, they can see where you're at. Nothing New is trying to get closer and closer to conveying as much as I can about daily existence, even while trying to pretend like I'm not being watched. But, you can only keep it up so long. Eventually, you're like, okay … I'm being watched, so, don't do anything embarrassing. But I think at some point, I'll have to surrender to the fact that it's constantly happening and that it'll be going on for months. It'll be harder and harder to treat it as a performance and I’ll have to lean into the idea that I'm alone as much as I can.

CROCKETT: One thing that I wanted to also mention in the context of this is that I really cherish the way that we first met. I’m on social media, but I don't follow artists just because I like their work. I don't follow celebrities. So, I often don't know what some artists look like. We met in this larger, elite space, and something drew me to you. You felt like a person I could connect with. It was like a green situation emanating from you. (laughs) But something about how we were first able to connect as people who felt an affinity that goes beyond that artist-curator dichotomy was so nice. 

PUPPIES PUPPIES: Yeah, I feel the same way. It's nice when you're working on something and you also just feel a connection as two people. With something so personal, it meant so much to me to be able to collaborate with a friend that I also call a sister.

cape: Amen

Subconscious Creation and Mythical Preservation: An Interview of Nina Hartmann by Leo

photograph by Alexander Rotonodo

Nina Hartmann navigates a diverse array of artistic mediums, seamlessly weaving her connection to music into her creative endeavors. Her work serves as a bridge, melting the divide between mysticism and critical thought. Within her conceptual pursuits, one encounters a unique blend of archival imagery, elusive symbols, screen prints, and Xerox collages. It’s in these varied forms of media that the synergy between visual artistry and musical expression effortlessly unfold. Employing deliberate restraint, Hartmann eschews superfluous elaboration about her work. She entrusts the observer with discovering the magical quality which resides in the gap between the art and viewer. Hartmann treats the output of her mind as an algorithm; it becomes a framework for further artistic computation. Her work delves into the depths of the subconscious, revealing concepts characterized by their infinitude. Her perspective extends to the creatively unconventional, where she intriguingly regards conspiracy theories as societal relics worthy of study—an open-mindedness which enunciates her versatility as an artist. A fusion of the modern mythological emerges, as Hartmann recycles recurring themes that persist in our collective consciousness. Through her exploration of spiritual phenomena, she invites us to delve into the enigmatic, prompting us to seek understanding in realms beyond the real. On the occasion of Hartmann’s exhibition, Soft Power, at Silke Lindner in New York, Leo Cocar investigates the artist's signs and symbols.

Leo: Hi Nina! It’d be great to start this off with a bit of insight into your background. People who pay attention to your practice have probably picked-up that there's some sort of connection to music-oriented communities and subcultures. The Xeroxed imagery in particular calls to mind aesthetic histories tied to death metal and hardcore, among other genres, and some of the conceptual material you work with also alludes to these ties. I was doing some digging into your background, and Discogs brought up a collaboration you did with Drew McDowell from Coil. 

Nina: I grew up going to punk, noise, and experimental music shows in South Florida. I actually learned how to make compositions by creating flyers and album art for my friends. I've played a bit of music, but it's never really been my main thing, so my way of collaborating has always been visually. A lot of my process has been influenced by subcultural music scenes, especially using recontextualized imagery through collage. Because I began creating compositions for flyers, it laid some groundwork for thinking about methods of disseminating information in general. Working with Drew was amazing. When he asked me to do his album art, it meant a lot to me because Coil was a big influence, especially some of their methodologies about ritualistic art making.

Leo: I can see the link, since for the most part, your world doesn’t really entail any drawing or drafting…it's mostly re-appropriated or quotational, the sculptural element of your practice.

Nina: Totally. I do paint in both the resin and encaustic pieces, but I wouldn’t say it’s the primary focus of my practice. My mom is a painter and her dad was a painter, both traditionally trained. I grew up surrounded by their work, as well as other art my mom exposed me to. I felt creatively inclined at an early age, but I remember being in art class, maybe in middle school, trying to paint a realistic landscape for an assignment and having so much trouble. I had this early psychic break about representation and got really frustrated by my inability to paint the way that was expected in school. I had to find my own way to make paintings without much of an adeptness to do so in a traditional way.

Leo: Would you say that the kind of background, the specific genres and scenes that you're working with, conceptually informed your current work? I feel like the folding in of esoterica and mysticism feels like part and parcel of the background you came from. 

Nina: Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, I didn't realize how unsettling my work can be to some people until starting the MFA program. Going to grad school made me confront and question some of the underlying reasons why I work the way I do, and why darkness has always been such a natural language to me. It’s never really made sense to simply say, “I think this is bad,” when critiquing power structures and investigating the darker phenomenon of human existence. I wanted to explore ways to reveal some of the more complex and contradictory layers of this subject matter. I’m interested in finding ways to engage effect by opening up spaces in which the viewer can project contents from their own psyche onto a piece and assess their own biases and opinions…kind of like a Rorschach test.

Going back to the influence that punk and experimental music had on me, there’s a certain mode of critique learned in those spaces. It almost approaches the sublime. I think a lot about Reagan-era punk bands and how they would use photos of politicians or policemen on the covers of their albums. The simple recontextualization of the image creates a new critical function. There’s a unique experience that has to do with the body and the senses through the effect of imagery, as well as live shows. 

Nina Hartmann
Networked Cross (Closing the Circle), 2023
Encaustic medium, inkjet print on wood panel
60 x 42 x 1 inches

Leo: It’s ironic that your work gets read as spooky. It feels like a recursion of 1980s Satanic Panic sort of thing where a lot of thematics or concepts that you engage with in your work aren't dark at all, but the mainstream understanding of these visual or aesthetic traditions are still closely linked with a clean-cut notion of evil. In reality, it's a lot like radical community-oriented politics and consciousness expansion, or just troubling the zeitgeist at large.

Nina: I agree. It makes sense to me to want to understand systems of power by exploring and deconstructing them in parts or specific events. We’re surrounded by these intentionally opaque systems that have existed since the beginning of time to control us. A big part of my research method is trying to acquire knowledge bit-by-bit to understand these systems, since it’s so daunting to take on such a large task.

Leo: On that note, could you speak a little bit more about modes of critique?

Nina: People often want a clear stance from me, politically or morally, and I think that withholding some of that is an important part of the work. It’s not a way to evade responsibility, I just think it can sometimes limit the work. The artist holds an inherent power by choosing to withhold and refuse.

I’m really interested in the body of work mimicking the systems that it’s exploring. I’ve been referencing a list of historical propaganda tactics when thinking about how the work functions as a whole and how I can subliminally harness them. Some of the ones I’ve been most interested in are repetition, allure, mysticism, redaction, suppression, and disinformation. Like how does a beautiful and seductive object affect your consideration of its legitimacy or authority? What about its composition, the quality of the photo, the colors, its level of obfuscation, and the quality of the object? The body of work starts to function as its own unique system.

Leo: I feel like ambiguity or withholding is generative within any artistic practice. No matter how direct or clear you make the message of your work, there'll always be some sort of gap between the author and viewer. Work can become more generative when you lean into the expansion of the gap between these two figures. In turn, this is why your work is so compelling—you leave a slight trail of meaning or recognizability for the viewer, just enough for something to latch onto without overdetermination. That's to say the magic or poetic quality of the artwork is in the gap, the ambiguity or the act of withholding. 

Nina: It’s a delicate balance and a constant re-negotiation for a lot of artists. I like the idea of harnessing “the gap” as a tool. You want to supply enough information so the work can have meaning and people can access it, but also leave enough ambiguity so there’s room for subjective interpretation. There’s an element to the work where I take on the role of an unreliable narrator, maybe somewhat of a playful or trickster spirit. I used AI to alter a lot of the photos for this new work, either by colorizing black-and-white photos or generating new content. There’s a spirit of distrust that I’m interested in, where the work can move between truth and fiction, belief and fact, and it’s just an exploration of all these things.

I like to supply clues that act as breadcrumbs, often in the title or even as text within the paintings—it’s up to the viewer if they want to start their own line of research. I think the ambiguity creates room to take on larger themes. I’m always looking for ways that photographs can transform into contemporary iconography or symbols. 

Nina Hartmann
Tools for Psychic Warfare, 2023
Resin, Acrylic, Pigment, Inkjet Print
22.5 x 26 x 3/4 inches

Leo: How important are the specific narratives, histories, and moments evoked by your work? I've always thought about your work in relationship to the unknown—this is particularly present with histories of conspiracy theories in the sense that their grip on the cultural or national psyche isn't necessarily about the particular qualities of a given conspiracy narrative, but rather that they gesture towards a vast, overwhelming, and ungraspable body of knowledge that is always inaccessible. In this way, the particular conspiracy theory acts as one of the few points of visibility in this subterranean network of intelligence. I think your interest in Jung often functions in the same way—you’re not necessarily interested in the particular qualities of a given archetype, but rather that they mark one of the few nodes of recognizability in the morass that is the structure of the human psyche.

Nina: It's trying to tap into these collective anxieties, fears, and desires that have existed in humans since the beginning of time and how they manifest in cultural phenomena or historical events. Conspiracy theories have been a great way of exploring these ideas for me because, even though they can be silly or outlandish at times, they come from a place of questioning and subversion, and also imagination. They’re very much the modern mythological. They’re almost always these recycled myths or reoccurring themes in society that have existed forever. 

I’m also really drawn to the spirit of questioning and the role of the self-appointed detective. It is in part a result of a deep skepticism and mistrust, because so many people are tired of being lied to by politicians and such.

Leo: So, the use of—or interest in—Jungian psychology and conspiracy theories act as a tool to think about primordial anxieties or modes found in the human psychological condition? It’s something similar to fear or paranoia, but that might be a little blunt. 

Nina: Absolutely. It's very much a manifestation of collective fears and anxieties that gain momentum. There's a reason that people, including myself, relate to them [conspiracy theories] and become so consumed. And a lot of people are grasping for personal power within a world where we’re manipulated by the misinformation we're given so often, and trying to reclaim the narrative. 

We keep seeing this phenomenon of conspiracy theories proving to be true. We’ve seen it with all of these stranger-than-fiction moments that seem almost unbelievable until new declassified information becomes available. Things like MK-Ultra, Project Stargate, all of the UFO hearings happening right now. Our realities can collapse at any moment, and these events serve as a kind of memento mori of reality—they remind us that everything we're taught is a potential farce. It speaks to the fragility of accepted knowledge, and all of the problems with documented history. All recorded history is layered with subjectivity and biases, and our understanding of scientific knowledge or “facts” is constantly changing and evolving. 

Leo: The use of conspiracy theories have a weirdly sublime quality to them. Individual narratives such as that of the mentalist Uri Geller, whose purported psychic abilities eventually lead to a CIA collaboration. There's a sublimity to conspiracy theories that gestures towards this huge, overwhelming network of information that's unstable, but also withheld all the time. It’s kind of like the rhizome network underneath the mushroom’s fruiting body.

Nina: There are these little bits of outlandish information that can provoke a reevaluation of our accepted knowledge. I did a show at this gallery Gern en Regalia in 2020, where I worked almost exclusively from the Project Stargate archive in the Freedom of Information Act, which, if people don't know, is this project where the CIA tried to harness peoples’ psychic abilities to spy on Russia using remote viewing, kind of like astral projection. I very much view the moments of knowledge acquisition I had while gathering research as a form of mind expansion. My practice began through researching subject matter I'm just interested in, honestly. 

Nina Hartmann
Chaos Map (Balance Diagram), 2023
Encaustic medium, inkjet print, pigment on wood panel
64 x 59.5 x 1 inches

Leo: Which is kind of funny because, in a way, your work has this funny dialectic where there’s an act of withholding and then the histories that you're drawing from hinge on  revelation or disclosure. These secret operations or conspiracy theories you draw upon, despite gesturing towards the unknown, almost require the act of disclosure. I mean, if Project Stargate was never disclosed, its relationship to the vast corpus of state secrets and the unknown would obviously be invisible. In a sense, without disclosure, conspiracy theories and the like would be, well, nothing.

Nina: I think the way the work functions is constantly changing, as well as my desires and intentions. There will always be contradictions because the world is contradictory in nature. There’s a logic involved in the work’s creation, but there’s also a sort of non-logic that exists. I think this also speaks to my interest in mysticism and spirituality. It’s an exploration of the way that belief exists through a subjective logic, where rules can be broken at any time. People sometimes ask me if the work is a case study or something, maybe because I'm interested in critical theory, and cite inspiration from post-structuralist and sociology texts, but this work is not meant to be anthropological. It's partially about my own experience researching in these spaces. The way my own mental health fluctuates through the process is layered in the work. 

Leo: You’ve talked about the relationship between the citational or re-appropriated imagery used in your practice and its relationship to your music background. What about some of the current techniques you use? Namely, the suspension of imagery in encaustic or resin and the recurring motif of marking your works with shapes evocative of divine geometry. 

Nina: The resin pieces were largely inspired by DIY plaques or memorials on the walls of dive bars. I grew up in Miami and going to bars is a big part of the culture there. There’s this restaurant called Flanigan’s that is covered wall-to-wall with photos of people proudly holding their caught fish, and there’s this one photo of a “square grouper”, which is slang for a big brick of discarded marijuana found floating in the ocean. I think about that photo a lot [laughs]. When people cut out newspaper articles about bar regulars or employees and seal them into a cut-out piece of wood with table-top resin—I really like these moments of forging personal histories and creating objects to commemorate events that aren’t usually given space, but are important to that particular place. I became interested in how the characteristics of those forms give them importance, their shape or composition, which evoke other monument-like objects. Also the gesture of encapsulating and preserving something in resin, and how the desire to protect it against weathering gives it a quality of recorded history. 

I’m drawn to materials with an alchemical quality to them. Materials like encaustic and resin that activate the work like a potion. The heat, the mixing, the chemical interaction—it all ties into my interests of esoteric knowledge and alchemy as well. 

Leo: Could you also talk a little bit about how and where you source your imagery?

Nina: I gathered a lot of these images from leaflets, pamphlets, and press packets that different sectors of the US military and government released as gestures of transparency, usually as a response to controversial events. One of the main ones I sourced from was a book that the Air Force released that basically tried to disprove the 1940’s UFO sightings in Roswell. The book contains a collection of photographs documenting tests that involved throwing human sized dummies out of planes to test balloon technology, thereby offering an explanation for the alleged sightings. The way in which these booklets attempt to control and orchestrate the narrative really struck me, especially how they rely on the photograph as indisputable proof. I was also working with these Department of Energy Packets that were released in response to the environmental and health damage caused by nuclear testing done during the Manhattan Project. It’s funny, it feels so topical because of Oppenheimer.

Leo: In the new series of work being shown at Silke Lindner, there's a fairly generic image of a lamb in one of your works. Correct me if I’m wrong—I’m guessing this image isn’t from a secret government operation. So, how do you choose your imagery?, because there seems to be a mix of images directly relating to the histories engaged by any given number of your works as well as seemingly unrelated images.

Nina: That's a really good question. I'm interested in the juxtaposition of various source materials and how they interact with each other in their recontextualization. For instance, having images from an official CIA archive existing on the same wall as images from a more subterranean source, like page 57 of a conspiracy theory message board about the pope’s ties to the satanic church. The scrambling breaks down the hierarchies of information, giving it a new rhizomatic manifestation. I want to deconstruct the ways we assign legitimacy to content based on its characteristics and the context, or lack thereof, that it's delivered in. The lack of context breaks the image down into a more symbolic function.

Leo: Your work also possesses a flickering quality, which I think has to do with an engagement with temporality. For example, in the 20th century Air Force book you just talked about, photography was used as a way of assigning objectivity or truth to a given event. But now, it's come full circle: no imagery is trusted in our post-truth era. This isn’t only due to the advancement of photo editing software, but also AI capabilities. It’s almost as if the possibility of the camera or image being objective has entirely gone out the window.

Nina: Photography’s function as evidence or data feels so topical right now with all that’s happening with the advancement of artificial intelligence. A big conceptual inspiration for the show was the idea of the operational image, which Harun Farocki talks about in Phantom Images. Basically, it’s an image that exists for a function, like a still from a drone camera containing GPS coordinates and a crosshair, or a sonogram image. The concept sparked a line of inquiry for me about images that hold authority through their technological characteristics and qualities. Operational images contain some sort of objective truth value because of their function of measurement and task. I tried to employ some of the compositional characteristics commonly recognized in these images to make paintings. 

Leo: These images are legitimized not through their ability to reproduce a view of the world as it's seen by the human eye, but through their ability to penetrate this form of vision, which is then further legitimized by their role within a larger operation of knowledge accruement. I think this is formally mirrored in your work in the way your sculptures are reminiscent of cosmograms, of charts and diagrams that show the world as it is beyond the pale of the mundane. Your practice seems to almost fall into the category of a research-based practice—just without the designer-furniture-and-text installation format.

Nina: Yeah, you know one of my professors said to me during a crit that my work is trying to do what Hans Haacke does but in the opposite way, and I kind of loved that. 

Leo: I think it's a huge compliment to be honest. It’s a conversation I’ve had with several people but the problem with a lot of these practices (not Haacke’s, obviously) is that I’m not about to spend sixteen hours reading in a gallery.

Nina: I have this vast archive of documents and images, but I always try to find a way to synthesize them into more digestible forms and engage the senses in an exciting way, because at the end of the day we live in a super fast-paced world with a short attention span, and I also want that to be part of the work. Kind of mimicking the ways images become iconographic in social media, which we’ve all gotten used to. As I mentioned, allure or seduction through material is a part of the work. People always come up to me and are like, “I want to lick the resin”.  

Leo: So why the recurring turn to specifically military-centric special operations and conspiracy theories?

Nina: My dad's father and his three brothers were all in the US Army or Navy during World War II. My grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor and a decorated Navy captain. On the contrary, my father was successful in dodging the Vietnam draft multiple times. They tried to draft him, I think, three times. He learned this yoga technique from his friend which involved clenching his sphincter muscle for extended periods of time to heighten his blood pressure. His blood pressure was so high every time he would go in for his draft physical the doctors were like, this makes no sense, you’re in perfect health but your blood pressure is through the roof. Once, they sent him to the hospital to be monitored for 72 hours because they assumed he was on drugs. But it worked every time! Anyways I can’t find any information about this technique on the internet, but I love the story. Maybe these two facts can speak to some of the poetics of my inclination.

Leo: [laughs] I think this family history of where yogic practice and warfare meet feels appropriate for contextualizing your work. Can you talk a little bit more about the role of psychology in your practice? We’ve talked about how Carl Jung’s ideas have been influential for you and even in this conversation you’ve mentioned fear, anxiety, and paranoia.

Nina: I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I have my own issues with mild paranoia in my personal life. Or maybe it isn't really paranoia, just a result of all the things I've experienced. I suffer from OCD and it feeds a lot of my compulsions to collect and organize, but I don't view the main mode of the work as being biographic or anything. I mentioned before that I do try to pick up on universal frequencies through letting go of control and creating methods or constraints for the collection process. Sometimes I rely on algorithms to reveal the next subject, like a form of divination. For this new work, I tried to treat my brain like a processor of information in order to create some of the shapes. On some days, I would take in curated information for several hours, and then have a drawing and collage session afterwards. For instance, I might look at early alchemical diagrams, a collection of fractal geometries, and early panopticon architecture to an exhaustive point, and then try to create something while in a disassociate state after I’ve subconsciously absorbed the content. It’s somewhat like a form of automatic drawing. It’s a way of letting go, as well as attempting to tap into the power of the subconscious. 

Leo: Is this a consistent way of working in your practice or is this something you developed or turned towards in your new show with Silke Lindner?

Nina: In some ways, it just became more fine-tuned and intentional recently. 

Leo: I think your interest in both diagrams and psychology makes a lot of sense. I’m thinking now of Lacan’s graph of desire, and the attempt to visualize in the simplest form a titanic, ungraspable force in the world. In the context of psychoanalysis, clinical case studies—with their lived human experiences and specificities—are really the only way of thinking about such overwhelming forces, like desire. You can’t picture desire as a whole but you can think of it through small points of visibility, like with the subject talking through a traumatic event at the clinic. I think your images and work operate in much of the same way.

Nina: Yeah, it’s like trying to grasp and organize little moments within an infinite network that feels impossible to see or understand as a whole, but there are instances of understanding found in these little moments of revelation. At the end of the day, it’s an exercise in reality manipulation.

Soft Power will be on view at Silke Lindner until October 7th.

Daniel Arsham In Conversation With Andy Warhol Museum Director Patrick Moore

Photographer: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. 

In a globalized world, pop culture transcends dialect to create a language accessible to all. Daniel Arsham’s work taps into this reservoir of collective symbols while cheekily disconnecting them from their cultural niches, sending R2D2 back in time to erode and replacing it with a fresh Venus de Milo. Patrick Moore, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum and an expert judge of the weight our common cultural relics hold, has previously examined Arsham’s work through a lens tinted by Warhol’s campy visual commentary. While Warhol crafted the thrones of monolithic cultural figures, however, Arsham’s work presents the modern deities of culture and especially Americana as decaying relics. Despite this alternative view, his work maintains a celebratory and even reverent attitude toward its subject matter, which has landed him partnerships with Star Wars and Pokémon alongside the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Perrotin, his gallery of twenty years. This fall, the artist celebrates this two decade partnership with dual exhibitions across Perrotin New York (through October 14) and Paris (through October 7). In honor of this anniversary, Moore and Arsham come together in conversation to explore the bridge between commercialism and fine art where Arsham and Warhol have built their practices.

DANIEL ARSHAM: When I did the press preview in Paris, I was asked what I thought about your essay in comparison to Warhol. Certainly, for me, it's a flattering comparison, but it gets to the heart of people feeling sometimes like what I'm doing is this very novel approach. It's almost like people forgot that Warhol was doing this 40 years ago. I think I told you, Patrick, about the story when I did the first collaboration with Adidas. I was having a conversation with a collector of mine who was like, how are you gonna allow this brand to use your work to sell sneakers? And I said, it's the opposite. I'm using them for their reach and the funding that they're gonna put towards this crazy project that I wanna do. 

PATRICK MOORE: I think that people not only forget about how earth-shattering it was when Warhol was first blurring the lines between the commercial world and the fine art world, but they also forget that Warhol had been largely dismissed at the end of his career. For a large part, I think that there was this backlash at his exploration of the commercial world and of making money as part of his practice. Do you think that still exists in the art world? Or has it become an accepted practice?

ARSHAM: I don't know if it's more accepted, but maybe the artists who are doing it feel more comfortable around it. I'm thinking art of artists like George Condo or Tom Sachs who were already kind of integrating those sorts of elements within their own work, and it didn't matter whether the brand was directly involved with them or not. The context of those brands in their work already existed. So in some cases it's a benefit to maybe have the brand supporting that.

But really, what's the difference between a brand and a collector? The collector is purchasing or supporting. So much of my audience are not the traditional art world audience. And every time that I do an exhibition, when I post about he show, people always ask if they need tickets to come to the gallery. And I'm like, guys, this is the greatest thing ever. You can go to any art gallery and it is 100% free. Here in New York, it's like a huge free museum, and the collectors are the ones who pay for the audience to be able to see it.

MOORE: I was so glad that you and Perrotin asked me to think about this because as I mentioned in the essay, I had been thinking so much about you, and it was really seeing your work in that different setting that you described at Tiffany's in New York that started this. For you, how is it when you walk into that store and you see your work in that context? Does it feel fundamentally different than seeing it in your studio or in the gallery?

ARSHAM: In some ways it feels more natural in that location than seeing it in the gallery. I feel like the gallery, maybe it's a more minimal environment, but it's much more directly about the monetary transaction with the work. And at Tiffany, it's just there for people's pleasure or their inquisitiveness or curiosity. So it was like, the jewelry that was worn in, Breakfast at Tiffany's and other famous pieces that have been worn either in film or on the red carpet and outside of the exhibition. I had done work with Tiffany in the past, and they wanted a large work to be out there to kind of announce what was inside. 

Fractured Idols I , 2023.
Acrylic on canvas. Framed: 91 1/2 x 105 1/2
inch. Photographer: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of
the artist and Perrotin.

MOORE: In my essay about you, I also mentioned this idea of you ruining things to make them more precious or to help us see them new again. What did you think about that idea of ruining things?

ARSHAM: When I first started with that body of work, it was really about this idea of aging them, causing them to appear as if they're from a different era. And so much of the work that I've done from the beginning was always about time dislocation, where we're looking at a painting or an image or a story or a sculpture, and we don't quite know when it is from. Sometimes in the depiction of a painting, we see a landscape and there are these architectural structures within it, but it looks like maybe something ancient or something ultra-futuristic, and we don't really know when we are. And so the idea of decay in the works was really about causing the work to appear as if it's in a state of erosion, like it might be in 10,000 years. And the materiality of it is really important for the further understanding of what the object can be. Like, the crystals tell us something about the idea that a trompe-l’œil version of that would not. Like if I just took a radio, let's say, and I painted it to look old, and maybe the quality of it was sort of visually similar, the knowledge that it's actually made of crystal has this other sort of visceral truth quality about it. It's also very difficult to understand how they're made, which is a magic that I think artists often employ. You just can't understand the object. 

MOORE: When we look at your work, we see an object, but there's actually something that you're hiding underneath that object. In almost everything that you do, it seems like I'm seeing something, but you’re not letting me see what this is really about. 

ARSHAM: I guess that's one way to look at it. The other way is that you're seeing something in the objects, and this is part of the reason why I use things that are very familiar to almost everyone. No matter where they are in the world, it allows them an entrance point into the work. Like, I feel like I know that thing. I'm in. Once you get there, things become more complicated. When is this thing from, why is this wall moving? That use of the everyday object as an entrance point into my work has been consistent and super important for me.

Holiday Inn: Study for Falling Clock, 2023.
Graphite on paper. 10 1/2 x 7 1/4 inch. Graphite
on paper. 8 7/8 x 6 1/8 inch. Photographer:
Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

MOORE: I want to know a little bit more about how and why you draw. Do you draw every day? Is it a part of your practice every day? Is it something that's associated with projects? 

ARSHAM: It's for different uses. I use it as a way to prepare. I use it as a way to think. Sometimes concentrating on an object or an idea in drawing, when you're not really thinking about language, has a different way of telling you something about it or understanding something about it. And then sometimes drawings are really just like notation. I've been either making drawings in hotels for years. I always take the stationary with me. Some of my favorite ones are like the Holiday Inn from Arkansas or something like that, where it's a really bad graphic. That contrasts with the drawing that I'm doing of an eroded Greek figure or something like that.

MOORE: I had a more glamorous fantasy of you than the Holiday Inn. I was thinking of you in some glamorous hotel in Tokyo at 3:00 AM, jet-lagged out of your mind, like, I'm gonna start drawing. Holiday Inn never occurred to me.

ARSHAM: When I toured with Merce Cunningham, the accommodations were not luxury. It was wherever he could put up the entire dance company. But [in the exhibit] there are drawings from Gritti Palace in Venice or the Amman in Tokyo. It's the whole range.

MOORE: I saw a couple paintings that you were working on in your studio, and I was really, really drawn to them. One thing I was drawn to was the paint itself. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the paint, the matte quality of the paint, the palette that you're working with.

ARSHAM: I'm colorblind, and I think it has always made it very challenging for me to mix and match paint. If I'm working one day, and then I come back the next day, I always found it ultra frustrating to try to remake a color that I had mixed to match something that was already on the canvas. So, I had been working with this company, Golden Paints, to basically make me a complete gradient in the four colors that I wanted to use. They kept sending the sample, and I would say “Add more pigment”. I think that quality that you're describing is this feeling in the paint that it's just so lush and loaded with pigment. It's got like 20 times the amount of pigment that's in a commercial paint.

MOORE: Well, here's a big difference between you and Warhol. I think Andy used the cheapest possible paint he could find (laughs). Let's talk a little bit more about the paintings, because they are such an odd amalgam and it makes them really interesting. What I responded to was this idea of nostalgia and Americana, but I'd love to hear you talk about the paintings and what you were thinking about specifically when you selected those objects, those scenes that you create.

ARSHAM: I had been working for the past couple of years with the Pokémon Company in Japan, and I made a number of sculptures based on some of the Pokémon characters. And we also worked on an animation together that I insisted was hand-drawn. I did a couple paintings at the time that were like a single cell study. This exhibition has a number of works in it that use that anime or manga-type language in them. I'm mocking up most of my paintings from multiple different images–I'm basically doing a collage in Photoshop, and then I'm using that as a reference for the painting. So I'm throwing in references to old Air Jordan ads or vintage Porsche ads. There's cars in them, there's sneakers, there's the BMX bike from the movie ET. And it's all of these Easter eggs that encompass my world. And in the exhibition there, those works also exist in sculpture. So you might see like an R2D2 in a painting in silhouette. And then in the show you're seeing the actual sculpture of it. 

MOORE: Star Wars is a particular focus right now. Was that like a touchstone for you growing up? Does it have a kind of magic resonance for you?

ARSHAM: It's really one of the first movies that I can remember seeing in the cinema with my family. I was probably five, I guess it would've been Empire Strikes Back, and kind of just like something that was always been around. When I was a kid and I would stay home sick from school, there was a VHS that my father had recorded, one of the Star Wars, but he had recorded it from television, so it had all the commercials in it out as well. And so up until I was in high school, I'd be watching commercials from like the eighties mixed in with Star Wars. I wish I still had that VHS ‘cause it probably encompasses like everything that I'm interested in. You know, today I cook advertisements, um, you know, a Super Bowl commercial or like n b a playoffs and the Nike ad and you know, car ad and then Star Wars in between.

MOORE: Star Wars is so fascinating. Business is so much a part of your work – how do you go about working with a franchise like that? How does something like that happen?

ARSHAM: I had been speaking with some people from Lucasfilm in advance of the project in Monaco with Louis Hamilton. George Lucas is a huge F1 fan, and I think he'd been to every Monaco Grand Prix since the seventies. And he was there at the event with his wife [Mellody Hobson], and she says to me, I think we own some of your work. I was like, what? George Lucas has some of my work in his house? What is this? And so I'm like, which work is it? Like, where did you get it from? And she's like, Usher gave it to us as a gift. It was a work from about 15 years ago, a 35 millimeter movie camera that I had cast in volcanic ash. I don't think she knew who the artist was or anything, she just recognized it because of the similarity with the work that I had done for Louis. And so I told her, “by the way, I'm speaking with Lucasfilm about this thing.” And she connected me with the right people. And that's sort of how it came about.

MOORE: Well, it was meant to be then.

Daniel Arsham 20 Years will be on view at Perrotin New York until October 14, and Perrotin Paris until October 7.

R2 - D2TM: Quartz CrystallizedFigure , 2023.
Quartz, Selenite, Hydrostone. 48 x 42 1/16 x
42 1/16 inch. Photographer: Guillaume
Ziccarelli. Courtesy Perrotin. © & TM
Lucasfilm Ltd. © 2023 Daniel Arsham, Inc.

Theater, Fear, and Fairy Tales: An Interview of Artist Emma Webster

Emma Webster
The Rehearsal (Harvest Moon) (2023)
60 x 84 in
Oil on linen

interview by Chimera Mohammadi

How does one go about staging a stage? Emma Webster’s upcoming exhibition, Intermission at Jeffrey Deitch, answers this question by erasing the line between prop and (back)stage. This boundary erasure is nothing new for Webster, whose work combines the supernatural, unnatural, and natural realms, merging this paradoxical triad into a cohesive, uncanny space that reflects the inescapable presence of human viewership on nature and art. Her landscapes exist in a variety of intermediary spaces: between heaven and horror, nature and technology, fiction and reality, and theater and visual art. In Intermission, she gives physicality to these liminalities while highlighting previously behind-the-scenes sculptural stages of her process, creating an environment of borderless voyeurism that invites us, the viewers, into her creative world, while reminding us of our separation from it, reinforcing our roles as witnesses. 

MOHAMMADI: In your artist talk at Perrotin Tokyo, there were a few people asking, “where are the humans?” Which I thought was kind of funny because all your landscapes are very human, in my opinion. What human stories can be found in your work? 

WEBSTER: Maybe an Edenic origin story. I've heard many recently talk about the golem myth (or Pinocchio) with respect to AI. Maybe the creation of man, and the animation of this golem, relates to landscapes too because we associate nature is a womb-place. Everything from the Earth. 

MOHAMMADI: Your work has been described as otherworldly, supernatural, liminal—does it occupy a fairy tale or folktale niche?

WEBSTER: If we're presented with a backdrop and a stage, it begs the question of what's unfolding. And I'm interested in theater because it's another way, like fairy tales, of creating a suspension of disbelief. Whenever we go into a theater, we're expecting to be surprised. 

MOHAMMADI: Do you want to talk a little more about the expanding presence of theater and theatricality in your work? 

WEBSTER: The paintings come from staged dioramas in the computer. Usually, the stage is a real device we engage to see an unreal thing. But here, even the theater is a prop in and of itself. It's not a real theater. There’s levels of immersion: the experience of sculpting the source material in the VR, and you also have the immersive experience of being in the black box where you can be transported anywhere. But on top of that, you have to meander through the installation maze of wings, props, and equipment in order to see the paintings. I'm hoping that even the props that make fantasy are still fantasy here.

MOHAMMADI: You’ve talked about dolmens in your work and how you stumbled upon that type of structure accidentally. They kind of double as theaters in your work. Was that combination of theater with these very primal structures conscious? 

WEBSTER: That linkage between theater, vitrine, shelter, is all rooted in ‘the box.’ And the dolmens tripped me out when I began to think about the architecture that holds fantasy. It's a place to witness. You can't have theater unless you have spectatorship. 

MOHAMMADI: Someone said that “each finished work is a window into your virtual world.” Does each piece feel like a window into one world or are they sort of separate?

WEBSTER: I typically think about them as distinct worlds because each source sculpture is different. However I also like to think about the Jungian subconscious as a physical subterranean root system. When I consider that sort of framing device, it's fascinating to think these places are from one world. An ecosystem that allows for many kinds of life. 

MOHAMMADI: You've discussed the universality of beauty and utopian ideals, and you touched on this earlier when you were talking about representing both the Garden of Eden and the fairytale nightmarescape. Do you paint utopias? 

WEBSTER: I don't think utopias contain action. My knee-jerk response is “Well, utopia is peace, right? Utopian spaces, the grass is greener, the water's chill.” Anytime there's action, it's like, what the fuck is going to happen? So, maybe they're transforming into utopias or away from utopias, but there's too much tension in my paintings. 

MOHAMMADI: Also in the Perrotin talk, people kept asking you about the violence in your paintings, which I thought was interesting because I never got violence from them. 

WEBSTER: People read violence when there's an unknown. Violence is a response to fear. I’m coming to terms with our inability to anticipate reality. So much of our world is dramatically transforming right now. John Martin is one of my all-time favorite painters. I still don’t know how he painted the end of the world when the apocalypse, the spirit kingdom crashing into the Earth, is so abstract. How the hell do you make that painting, right? I want to bring that quality of solidifying something that we can't fathom.

MOHAMMADI: There's always fear with new technology, but there's a threat of replacement [with AI] that wasn't there with previous technology. 

WEBSTER: Totally. I've been thinking a lot about the show title, Intermission, because it’s a break where you go back to the real world, you're unsure, you've just been exposed to the primary conflict, when the curtain suddenly comes down. You're just waiting. You don't know what you're meant to do. Painting is all about frozen time too. And with developments in AI, we’re waiting for resolution. We're all just waiting for an answer. 

MOHAMMADI: You’ve been compared to everyone from Bierstadt to Dr. Seuss, and you've cited Blake and Bosch as among your influences. What were some inspirations for your upcoming show? 

WEBSTER: Adolphe Appia, old theater productions, and silent movies, for simple lighting compositions. In this show, I’m presenting landscape as prop. Some of the artists that you brought up, Blake, John Martin, or Turner, I'm fascinated with how they inject spirit into structured scene. This is also where I’m at mentally, existentially, in this place where spirituality and science merge. 

MOHAMMADI: Will theater become a stronger theme in your work? 

WEBSTER: Yeah, I mean, everything is theater in its own way. It's a simulation. And it's linked to still life in that way. This is the first show that I've done something this immersive. It's one thing to engage with sculpture. It's another thing entirely to show the behind-the-scenes, literally have people stumble behind the scenes, and have points of reference for the paintings that have previously been secret. 

Intermission is on view through October 21st at Jeffrey Deitch, 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Pee-wee & Nadia's Playhouse

 

Autre Magazine, Vol. 2 Iss. 15 F/W 2022: Losing My Religion

 

photographs by Nadia Lee Cohen
(director of photography Andrew Goeser)
photo assistance by Gustavo Soriano
styling by Chloe & Chenelle
tailoring by Oxana Sumenko
makeup by Ve Neill (for Paul Reubens)
& Lilly Keys @ A-Frame Agency (for Nadia Lee Cohen)
hair by Sami Knight @ A-Frame Agency
special thanks to Allison Berry, David Owen, Dream Factory Studios, Edge EQ Rentals, and Uncle Paulie’s Deli

Paul Reubens is one of the most brilliant comedic talents of our era. His character, Pee-wee Herman, a maniacal man child with a famous red bowtie, hypernasality, and a predilection for mischief, is a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. Invented on the stage of The Groundlings, Pee-wee Herman is equally iconic and archetypal as Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. Socially defective with the decency to wear a suit, both characters are rife with hilarious contradictions, and both characters are perfect representations of their respective zeitgeists. Whereas the Tramp was a silent and prophetic emblem of the forthcoming economic devastation of two global wars, Pee-wee may as well have been a louder-than-bombs manifestation of the late-capitalistic dreamscape of the 1980s. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton’s directorial debut) and later Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS and saw an average of ten million viewers per episode, was a fantasy of talking furniture in a supersaturated world that harkened back to 1950s diners and primetime dance competitions, a satirization of Post-War Americana as a frenzied pastiche. This pastiche was a siren call for rising artist and photographer Nadia Lee Cohen, who also trades in the currency of alter egos and the milieu of consumerist reverie through the lens of humor. Raised in the English countryside, a self-professed wild child, the technicolor stagecraft of Hollywood had an irresistible allure. Her solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, which was an unabashed sensation, included two large bodies of work from two sold out monographs published by IDEA Books. Women includes over 100 portraits of a diverse cast of female characters fictionalized by Cohen, at work and at play, all under the banner of Los Angeles’ disparate socio-economic milieu. Reminiscent of movie stills, the images are freeze frames in moments of action, repose, or seductive enchantment. In her most recent series,  HELLO, My Name Is, Nadia utilizes extensive prosthetics and makeup to embody a vast array of characters inspired by found corporate name tags—each character has an invented story, thoughts, dreams, and desires. It is a Hitchcockian character study of self-portraiture. Jean Baudrillard talked about this escape from the self in an age of simulation and hyperreality: "Never to be oneself, but never to be alienated: to enter from the outside into the form of the other." Both Paul Reubens and Nadia Lee Cohen take immense pleasure in this metamorphosis. Currently in production is a two-part HBO documentary on the life of Paul Reubens, directed by Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth) and produced by the Safdie Brothers. In a time of shapeshifting realities and alternative facts, a time when we don’t even recognize the reflection in our mirrors, what can two masters of disguise teach us about who we really are?  

PAUL REUBENS Should we talk a little bit about how we met?  

NADIA LEE COHEN I knew you way before you knew anything about me. I used to do your Tequila dance for relatives when they came over. 

PAUL REUBENS I remember seeing you on Instagram. The more I saw, the more I was like, I have to know who this person is. And then, didn't I write you a note on Instagram?  

NADIA LEE COHEN Yes, you did. You shared something of mine and I thought it was a mistake. Tell me about growing up in Sarasota, [Florida] I Googled it last night. When did your fantasy world begin?  

PAUL REUBENS Well, my fantasy world began way before Sarasota because we moved there when I was in fourth grade. I was already obsessed with show business and wanted to be an actor when I was just a little kid. But I also watched a lot of television. That’s what really made me want to become an actor. I watched a lot of American shows like the Mickey Mouse Club, and there was a marionette named Howdy Doody that I loved so much. And then I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Somehow, I just recognized, without knowing it, what a clown she was.  

NADIA LEE COHEN People always ask about the connection of where I grew up in relation to why I’m inspired by what I’m inspired by. I really have to rack my brain for answers. Having that question repeated made me realize there’s a chance I've been lying all this time and only recently realized it’s probably just down to the color palette, which is a mass of wet green and muddy brown. That's all I saw for maybe fifteen years, and I think that caused me to become excited by things like signage and food packaging; which eventually led me to America and all things American. 

PAUL REUBENS That makes sense to me too. As an infant—or almost an infant—I remember being obsessed by wallpaper, my blanket, and patterns. For me, it was patterns.  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Patterns or color. I watched cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Ren and Stimpy, things like that. And a British show called Bill and Ben. When I think back to those, I remember the pattern and color rather than the narrative. 

PAUL REUBENS  Sarasota, Florida was the winter headquarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus. So, when you would go to the grocery store, you could tell who all the circus people were. They were just dressed differently. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I'm imagining the fat lady and the bearded lady buying eggs. 

PAUL REUBENS There was an adjacent community where all the sideshow people lived.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Why? Because they were outcasts?  

PAUL REUBENS Yeah. They lived in a different community.  

NADIA LEE COHEN  So, who were you seeing?  

PAUL REUBENS This is a long time ago, and this wouldn't be that uncommon now, but you would see somebody with dyed red hair or fishnet stockings. You would go, oh, wow, there's a circus performer. That seemed like show business. That's the closest I had been to real show business. We would see them all over town. And we lived near some circus people. So, for a while I just thought, maybe this is my calling.  

NADIA LEE COHEN I was a tomboy, didn't brush my hair and was always covered in mud, cuts, and bruises. The farm we grew up in was kind of a building site, my dad was slowly doing it up. I had this little quad bike and I'd just roam around everywhere saving animals till the sun went down. There was this nasty disease the rabbits got in England called myxomatosis. It would make them go blind and mangey. So, I used to go around collecting them which is probably pretty unhygienic. They'd all eventually die, so sad but probably taught me a lot about death. There were also these cages around the fields where pheasants were trapped for the local gentry to shoot on the weekend. I used to free them too. One day the gamekeeper knocked at the door and told my dad “If your daughter keeps this shit up I’ll shoot her.” 

PAUL REUBENS I was waiting for you to bring up your dad. I wanted to talk about dads for one minute, because I feel like our dads have a bit in common and probably had a lot to do with how we turned out. You posted some pictures of your dad and he looked so amazing. He was on a motorcycle and he looked like a rebel. And my father was really like that too. 

NADIA LEE COHEN Tell me about him.  

PAUL REUBENS Well, my father and four other Americans started the Israeli Air Force in 1947. There’s a documentary about it. But I grew up not really having very much context for his stories and feeling like they were all exaggerated. I didn't realize it was him and just four other people. I just thought it was a whole big thing with lots of people. And so my father was like Indiana Jones. And I got this vibe that your dad was like that too.  

NADIA LEE COHEN That’s incredible, I think I knew parts of that but I also didn’t realize it was just him and four other guys. My dad doesn’t like rules and I think I inherited that. My mom was married to somebody in the band Supertramp before I was born, they split and she fled to a kibbutz in Israel, which is apparently what the majority of 18-to-30-year-olds were doing in the 1970s. That’s where she met my dad. He just rode up to her on his motorbike, smoking with a red hoodie on. He was a rebel and always in trouble. He couldn't speak any English, so they couldn't actually converse for years. She brought him back to England and they're still together.  

PAUL REUBENS Every detail of that sounds fantastic. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  And the best thing is it’s recorded. My dad has such amazing documentation of his childhood, teens, and early manhood. He and his friends all chipped in to buy a camera when they were really young. Which was a big deal as they were dirt poor—like stealing-eggs-from-the-neighbors kind of poor. 

PAUL REUBENS  Going back to rules, and I have a feeling that we had this in common—I think one of many things I got from my dad was, do not tell me no about something. If you tell me that something can't be done, that's like a challenge to me. I'm like, oh I will figure that out. Don't you have that? 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Oh, 100%. Definitely. My mom says I have that, and maybe I got it from her. Her dad told her to ‘never call anyone sir’ which I love as a life sentiment. I wanted to ask about your father building a stage for you? 

PAUL REUBENS  I'm so happy you brought that up because I know that your father also built you a stage. When I was a kid, we lived in upstate New York—this was before we moved to Florida, so I must have been like five or six years old. One day my father came in and said that he would build something in the basement for both my sister and I—whatever we wanted. My sister wanted a pirate ship, so he built her a pirate ship. And I wanted a stage, so he built me a stage. I would do the craziest stuff on the stage. I became very popular in our neighborhood with older kids who would use me to get to the stage. They would put on shows and give me a bit part. One of them was a sci-fi play where I got pushed offstage into a vat of acid—that was my whole part. My father and I would go to these novelty stores in New York City and I would get to choose one thing to buy, and I would always buy something for my stage. One time, I bought this fake grass mat, very small.  I would put that on the stage and sit with my legs to the side, like a fawn, and I would turn on the blue light. It was like a tableau, like I was in the woods and I was some kind of animal in repose.  

 

Nadia wears CELINE
Paul wears TOM FORD

 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Was there an audience?  

PAUL REUBENS  No, I would do it by myself (laughs). I was pretty young to be like, let me just be as weird as I can be today, but that's kind of what it was. 

NADIA LEE COHEN My stage was above the garage. It was a time when I was really obsessed with the reverse dream sequence in Twin Peaks. You know with the zigzag floor and red curtain? I asked my parents to help me make it, and one day I came home from school and they’d made it. My dad had put up the curtain and built the stage and my mom hand-painted the zigzags. It’s still there, only now my parents have a Polish lodger who lives in the flat above the garage and works out in the Twin Peaks area (laughs). I feel like David Lynch would be very into the visual of a buff little Polish guy lifting weights in that set. 

PAUL REUBENS Another obvious thing that we have in common is that we both deal in alter egos. That's where we overlap. But, I only really have one alter ego. I mean, being an actor in movies, you get to play an alter ego, but it's a scripted thing. You're co-creating something that somebody else wrote and conceived. Whereas you just go from scratch.  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Do you find you're less self-conscious when dressed as somebody else? I find I have this freedom in not caring what I look like because they don't care about what they look like. Character gives me a certain confidence I don't have as Nadia.  

PAUL REUBENS  Absolutely. That’s part of the allure and the glamor of alter egos. You hide behind them or disappear into them. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  I wonder if it has something to do with being insecure in yourself. Did you have a difficult upbringing with any bullying?  

PAUL REUBENS I didn't really. I mean, I was an oddball kid, but it didn't really affect me that much. I remember my first day of school, when we moved to Florida, I showed up in a full beachcomber outfit. I had cutoff pirate pants and a rope belt. My mother took us shopping and we got to pick out whatever we wanted. I have to give it to my parents. They were never like, “Are you kidding? Are you crazy? No, you can't wear that.” She'd be like, “Go ahead.” So I showed up in the craziest outfits and the kids in school were all like, “What the hell are you supposed to be?”  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Were they into it? 

PAUL REUBENS No, they weren't at all. They made fun of me. But instead of saying to myself, “Oh my God, I've made a huge mistake.” I was more like, “What part of this don't you guys get? I'm a Beachcomber. We're in Florida. Are you insane?” And the next day I went to school in the same outfit—just different color pirate pants and shirt. 

NADIA LEE COHEN On my first day of high school I decided to have two Princess Leia buns. My skirt was extremely long whilst everybody else's was very short. And I had these shoes that my mom bought because they came with a free watch. They were big and clunky. So I turned up looking like a real target. And also, at eleven, I was the height I am now—I used to stand with my hip dropped down to make myself shorter. Around a month into school I piled on makeup, tanned my skin terracotta and bleached my hair and eyebrows in order to successfully morph into the ‘Essex Girl’ I noticed was popular. I fully went for it.  

PAUL REUBENS So, was it an early alter ego do you think?  

NADIA LEE COHEN: I guess so. It was quite extreme. It probably lasted the duration of school. As soon as I went to college I dropped it.  

PAUL REUBENS Speaking of college, where did you get the skills that you have now? Did you go to art school? 

NADIA LEE COHEN  I went to London College of Fashion for no reason other than fashion and art interested me. I took a course, which was basically a bit of everything: design, textiles, photography, styling, and whatever else is fashion related. And then, they whittled it down. The teacher would say, “You're shit at that, you’re good at that,” until you’re left with two things. Which for me was styling and photography. And they said “pick one,” so I picked photography. Did you go to school for art? 

PAUL REUBENS I dropped out of school in fourth grade. No, I'm kidding (both laugh). I came out here to attend the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) that was founded and endowed by Walt Disney. He conceptualized it, but died before it was actually built. There was a film school, a theater school, an art school, a writing school, a dance school, a music school—all the visual and performing arts under one roof. It was very avant garde when it started. I had gone to a school that was the opposite of that to start and thought, oh no, I want real crazy, avant garde. And that’s exactly what it was. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  How long were you there? 

PAUL REUBENS  I was there for, I think six, years. I never wound up getting a degree, but the one thing that I did that was the smartest thing, or maybe dumb luck a little bit—because I always felt I was so interested in so many things—I just went: do not question what interests you. Just follow whatever interests you. At some point down the line, it's gonna all get mixed together and the meaning will be revealed in some dramatic way. I was so lucky, because when Pee-wee came along, I was present enough to go, this is it, this is the thing—this is what all of that stuff meant. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Do you think you'd been building Pee-wee for years, unconsciously? 

PAUL REUBENS  Yes, because he’s a whole bunch of different things that all came together. Once I had become Pee-wee Herman, there was an American show called  The Dating Game, which would have three bachelors, and a woman would pick one date. So, I put on my Pee-wee suit and auditioned to be a contestant. This was the first time I had ever gone out into the world as Pee-wee Herman. Prior to that, I'd just been in this little theater group. The second I walked into this audition, I could tell that the people running it were like, oh my god. They were all just trying to not lose their shit. And same with all the guys that were in there. When I filled out an application that asked about hobbies, I answered, cleaning my room—just weird stuff. When I left the audition, I thought to myself, I'm gonna be on this show. I just had this definite confidence that they were going to put me on the show. When I left the audition and walked outside down the street, people were practically walking into the sides of buildings and hitting lampposts. I just went, Do not ignore this. This is real. This is something. This is power. 

NADIA LEE COHEN Did you have the voice developed already?  

PAUL REUBENS  Yes. The voice was from a play I did long before that. I just mixed a bunch of stuff. You know, similar to what you said earlier, I've had to answer: how did I create Pee-wee? And where did the voice come from? You would think after this many years I would have a better story or I would at least make up a lie that would be interesting. But I don't. When you do these things, you’re just creating something that becomes something later on.    

NADIA LEE COHEN Yeah, it just takes form—kind of like a snowball, which rolls until eventually it stops and looks exactly like Pee-wee. Does Pee-wee like anything that you don't like? 

PAUL REUBENS  Oh, I think probably a lot of things. Yeah. I think that if you're hiding behind the character, then there's at least something. I've been doing it for so long that there was a point when I decided I was going to have to change the rules for Pee-wee and allow him to do things and be things he wasn't originally, just because it started to get a little stale for me, and there were other things I wanted to do. Early on, I was in a comedy group and I had lots of other characters. I had about ten alter egos before Pee-wee.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Did they all have looks? 

PAUL REUBENS They were all very detailed, but really different from Pee-wee, and nothing like the kind of impact that Pee-wee had. I feel like what was going on in art school in the ‘70s was performance art and conceptual art. So for me, Pee-wee Herman was always like conceptual art and performance art. And the conceptual part of it, the performance art part of it was my secret—that I wasn't really that person. Because I tried really hard to make it seem like he was a real person. 

 

Nadia wears glasses by l.a.Eyeworks.

 

NADIA LEE COHEN If you were invited to something, would they expect you to come as Pee-wee? 

PAUL REUBENS Well, the point was that no one even knew who Paul was. No one. For example, when Pee-wee's Big Adventure premiered and my credit came up as a screenwriter, nobody knew who that was. No one knew Paul Reubens had anything to do with Pee-wee Herman because I spent a lot of energy never doing anything out of character. I just thought that if people thought I was an actor, they'd be like, oh yeah, whatever. There was a guy that inspired me in a conceptual way named Tiny Tim. He was a freak, but you never went, oh, that's an act. People were like,  oh my god, he's a freaky person. There was also an act on the Ed Sullivan show who had an alter ego. This is when I was four or five years old. His name was Bill Dana and he would come out with this character named Jose Jimenez who was a Bolivian astronaut. It was very, very similar to Andy Kaufman’s foreign man character. And the third or fourth time watching I realized, wait a minute, this is all made up. He's not really this guy. And I never thought about that again on a conscious level until I met him years later at an autograph show. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I’m trying to think of the British equivalent. Which would probably be Alan Partridge or Alistair McGowan’s Big Impression. I remember being mesmerized at the concept of a person morphing their physicalities, mannerisms, and voice in order to become someone else. 

PAUL REUBENS Did it influence what you do now? 

NADIA LEE COHEN It must have, along with Catherine Tate, or Little Britain. England had a lot of impressionist shows.  

PAUL REUBENS One thing that is happening today culturally, is that it's harder and harder to set yourself apart.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Because we’re over saturated. 

PAUL REUBENS  Just to be cliche for a moment—Andy Warhol said, “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” And we live in a culture, at least in the United States, where lots of people seek fame, and social media is full of people who are trying to become known, and leave their mark. I think it's human nature to wanna leave your mark in some way. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Did you see the Andy Warhol documentary where they used AI to remake his voice? Would you want that ever, because your fifteen minutes would be forever?  

PAUL REUBENS I'm hoping that I can, at some point, sell or lease my IP. And part of the lure of that is that it would include my digital scans so that you could make a Pee-wee movie long after I'm gone. And when I say that, people always ask about the voice, but by the time they can cheaply churn out an image of me that looks real, they’ll be able to figure out the voice as well. 

 
 

NADIA LEE COHEN But we all have so much more ability to create characters now. On the internet you can just pretend that you're living whatever life that you want to live and sell that to whoever's buying it. 

PAUL REUBENS So, how does art even fit into a time when things are so rotten, and horrible, and crazy, and weird, and mixed up? Who has the nerve to be an artist? You have to have some nerve to be an artist. And how do you, even in the art world, set yourself apart? You have set yourself apart completely. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I think it's the confrontation—you absorb what's going on, confront it, turn it into something comical and entertaining, and then show it to people. 

PAUL REUBENS  You know, I hadn't really considered how much in the comedy realm you are. Because in my opinion, most art doesn't include comedy. When you mix a little comedy into art, it makes a whole different thing.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Yes. Take Jordan Wolfson's work. I think he falls into the category of creating comical, dark, and probably quite offensive art to certain people. That’s right up my alley.  

PAUL REUBENS  But your work also transcends so many things. It encompasses so many things. Some of those alter egos are dark and some of them, you can ask, what's their socioeconomic background? Some of those people seem like they could be down on their luck. It’s all over the map. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  They’re a ‘Mr Potato Head’ hybrid of personal relationships or people I’ve seen down the shops. There’s one that's really representative of my uncle Terry, and he’s called Terry. There’s a continuous undercurrent of comedy with my family, my parents are always taking the piss out of each other and cracking jokes. My brother's a comic as well. 

PAUL REUBENS And your parents are funny?  

NADIA LEE COHEN  Yeah. My dad to laugh at and my mom to laugh with.   

PAUL REUBENS How lucky is that? I think it’s so incredibly lucky that my parents were funny— that I grew up with this real intense sense of humor, or irony, or both. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Yes we are, I find that kind of irony rare in Los Angeles. I also have a lot of gay and camp influence. Are ‘camp’ or ‘kitsch’ annoying buzzwords to you? 

PAUL REUBENS I hate the word kitsch. It’s such an ugly word. I also appreciate that if you say kitsch to certain people, they're like, oh, I get it. I know what you mean.  

NADIA LEE COHEN Maybe we feel like we're above kitsch. 

PAUL REUBENS Not maybe—definitely. There's a sort of snobbery that I have to admit I do have in certain areas. In other areas, I feel just the opposite of that—like everyman kind of qualities, but I definitely feel snobbish about kitsch. 

NADIA LEE COHEN What's the literal definition of kitsch? I’m curious. Should we look it up? ‘Hey Siri what does Kitsch mean?’ 

SIRI Noun. Kitsch means art objects designed or considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way. 

NADIA LEE COHEN It basically describes exactly what we do. 

PAUL REUBENS So, therein lies why we don’t like it, because it’s so insulting.  (laughs) 

NADIA LEE COHEN It's so accurate, though. (laughs) 

PAUL REUBENS Maybe this is more a comment than a question. But it’s shocking how young you are. I guess I was around your age when I already had Pee-wee—I was thirty-two when I made Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and I had already been Pee-Wee for five years, but it’s admirable, and interesting, and amazing that you got it going on like this. I not only really appreciated the hell out of what you were doing at your exhibition, but it just raises all these possibilities of where you're going to go. To be young, and have your whole career ahead of you, and to be where you are right now, it's just staggering. 

NADIA LEE COHEN I wish little me doing the Tequila dance could hear what you just said now—thank you that really means a lot.  But back to you … can you tell me a little bit about playing Michael Jackson’s stunt double? Because I don’t know anything about this. 

PAUL REUBENS The answer to that is you'll have to wait until either my documentary comes out, or my memoir. 

NADIA LEE COHEN  Oh, that's such a great end-of-interview plug. You’ve done this before. (both laugh). I want to pretend that I was somebody’s stunt double too, but I'm not sure who it could be. 

 
 

Paul Reubens (né Rubenfeld was born on August 27, 1952 in Peekskill, New York. He privately fought cancer for several years before passing on July 30, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. He is cherished and missed by fans of all ages from around the world and his work will continue to inspire for many generations.

Making and Claiming Space: An Interview of Gallerist Jonathan Carver Moore


interview by Chimera Mohammadi

Sanibonani is a Zulu greeting used to welcome or address a group. The word crawls up the wall of the Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery, the title of the current show featuring Zanele Muholi and various students from their art institute. In Jonathan Carver Moore’s SF Gallery, Sanibonani embodies pride: an unconditional, celebratory welcome. Self-portraits of Black, Queer, South African artists line the walls. Monochromatic San Francisco sun streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows that occupy one wall, matching the grays in the mostly black-and-white images, adding a cool cast to the large, bronze bust of Muholi. Moore’s Gallery is in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood in the world’s first Transgender District. The location makes sense: Moore has a clear passion for highlighting unheard voices and unseen perspectives, and since the gallery’s premier exhibition, The Weight of Souls, with artist Kacy Jung in March, his gallery has developed a reputation for doing just that. I sat down with Moore to talk about his experiences as the first Black, gay, man to own a gallery in the SF Bay Area, the intersection of marginalization and creativity, and the artists with whom he’s worked.

CHIMERA MOHAMMADI: Do you consider your space and your focus radical?

JONATHAN CARVER MOORE: I consider it radical in that there’s not someone operating from the same viewpoint as me. I love California, I love San Francisco, I love the art that you see on the walls of the galleries, institutions, museums, organizations, but what’s missing is someone like me, someone like the artists that are behind the scenes. These are often things that are curated and collected by someone who doesn’t necessarily share those exact similar experiences as you, but what about the people who work in those spaces? Shouldn’t they have a say in the story being told, and in the curation and the images that you see, the images that you would like to see? I just don’t see that. It’s radical in that I’m the only openly gay Black man who owns a gallery in the Bay Area. I think that’s radical.

Installation view, Sanibonani (2023)
Images courtesy of Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery

MOHAMMADI: How has your work and your gallery been received? Are you happy with the response it’s gotten?

MOORE: I’m very happy. Of course, you know, you always want more people to come and view the works, see the gallery and the space, and see what I focus on, but I am quite happy. I think that the grand opening of nearly 400 people showing up in March showing up to see Kacy Jung’s The Weight of Souls, that was Kacy’s debut solo exhibition. Kacy is born and raised in Taiwan, immigrated to the US to go to school for science, it was a PhD program, and completely pivoted to become an artist. So, to see people come out that evening for Kacy, was a delight, because it shows that we already have an arts community here, but then to have an arts community for an artist that people may not be as familiar with – granted, Kacy has had incredible residencies at Headlands, and is an artist in residence at Root Division, so people know her. But to see that amount of people show up for her first solo was amazing, so I think it’s been very well received. Anyone can resonate with The Weight of Souls because it’s really taking us on this journey of assimilation, wanting to be part of a culture that sometimes, pushes and pulls you in many different directions. For her, that was being a woman, an Asian woman, an Asian woman who is an immigrant studying science but really wanting to be in the art space, an Asian immigrant who’s going against her parents’ wishes because they wanted her to get her PhD. So, it was a show that anyone could walk into, because we’ve all been at some point in our lives in a situation where we had to assimilate, to change a little bit who we are.

MOHAMMADI: You’ve spoken before on the alienation of visiting museums and galleries and having to insert yourself mentally in the space. How would it have impacted you to visit the space you’ve created now when you were younger?

MOORE: That’s an emotional question, one I’ve definitely thought about. Even when I go into the gallery sometimes, and I see the space that I have, I think about how I never thought that that was a possibility. That’s so strange to say, because it’s not like I’m someone who’s been around during the Jim Crow era and segregation, but I think because being Black and gay together, I never saw someone like me in those spaces. Not just the art space, any space. I didn’t have anyone to look up to, to say, “Ok, that’s who I could be like when I grow up.” The first memory I have of seeing a gay man doing something positive was Will, on Will and Grace. And that’s sad. So that’s what I think about. What can I do for someone else? It doesn’t have to be in the art world, but this location was something really important to me. People are always talking about this neighborhood and who's out on the streets, but the reality is, this neighborhood has the biggest, most dense population of children, and that’s exactly why I wanted this to be here. The Tenderloin has the highest number of children and biggest immigrant population. I want people to walk by those big windows that I have to see that there’s a Black person who works there. And if you know me, you know that there’s a Black gay person who owns it, so there’s a way for someone to see themself in my story and this thing I’ve built.

MOHAMMADI: Your location in the Transgender District has been widely noted. Do you want to talk a bit more on bringing art to underserved communities?

MOORE: I would be silly to think that I’m part of a community that’s only focused on gay men or lesbians. We are a huge community, and not at all a monolith. Trans people in the Trans District, these are people and this district needs to be recognized with the history that exists here. Also, the Transgender District has been very supportive of me being a gallery here. When I wanted to open, they were the ones who gave me a grant to open a gallery in San Francisco, and to be in the Transgender District. The support of such a big organization means a lot to me. So, any way that I can support trans people and the non-profit and the neighborhood is what I’m going to do at any given time. 

MOHAMMADI: bell hooks famously defined Queer as the self that “has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live”. Do you feel this intersection of Queerness and creativity in your works?

MOORE: How else would I be doing that without bell hooks? It is a space where we can speak and live and thrive, not just the community itself in the Transgender District, but my physical space in the gallery. It’s one where all are welcome to be whoever they are, whoever they want to be that day or whoever they feel they are the next day. I feel that all of that is necessary, and my space truly embodies that.

MOHAMMADI: Roger Wilkins said that the greatest power of White oppression is to define Black reality and to shape culture to reinforce that reality. With that in mind, do you want to speak on the importance of Black self-determination, especially with your current Muholi exhibition?

MOORE: I was at an event with Fredrika Newton [the wife of Black Panther leader Huey Newton] a few months ago, and one of the guest speakers said: “My Black entrepreneurship is not based on your white acceptance.” I feel like I’m reminded of that so often. It’s something that’s been beaten into all of us, that it’s only going to be successful if this person wants to acquire it, or if this person writes about it, or if this person says yes or go. The reality is, as much as I would love to take in everyone’s opinions, you’ve got to own and accept who you are yourself and be happy where you are in your life. Having this Muholi show, this show that cements and solidifies Black Queer existence in South Africa, and having it exist here in San Francisco, that is the exact opposite of someone being able to oppress us. Because no matter what, whether or not someone is acquiring those works, you now know those images you saw on those walls, and the bronze [bust of Muholi] in that Black-owned gallery, that lives in your mind and exists, which means it can’t be erased. Muholi has done such a good job at instilling that in me as a gallerist, as a friend, as a collector, and mentoring me. Don’t wait for anybody else to show you the way, to do it first, to give you the go ahead, you’ve got to be in charge of it yourself, and you’ve got to make sure that you’re making space for yourself, and not just taking up space, but claiming space. And that’s exactly what you see in 966 Market St. and for sure in that show. 

 

Installation view, Sanibonani (2023)
Images courtesy of Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery

 


MOHAMMADI: What are you hopeful for in your future and the future of the gallery?

MOORE: I’m hopeful for a lot. (laughs) I’ve mentioned before that I care so much about community, and having the opportunity for so many people to be seen that may not have been seen. I’m looking forward to seeing that on a more global platform. Like, it’s great in San Francisco  - I love San Francisco, SF has a great arts community, and we show up for each other, like has been done for the openings that I’ve had so far, but I want to see that on a global level. 

Sanibonani is on view through August 4th at Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery, 966 Market St., San Francisco. Moore will also be organizing a special screening of Kokomo City at the Roxie Theater on August 4th.

Deconstructing Genesis: An Interview of Wynnie Mynerva

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs


interview by Jesus Nebreda Galindez
creative direction by Alec Charlip
photography by Andrés Jaña
styling by Abby Bencie
makeup by Marco Castro
hair by Luisa Popović
production by BORN Artists

The question of original sin has no relevance in Lima-based artist Wynnie Mynerva’s Book of Genesis. For their inaugural American solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, the artist will be presenting The Original Riot, opening tomorrow (June 29) at the New Museum with a site-specific installation that constitutes the largest painting ever to be presented by the institution, as well as a sculptural element that was surgically removed from the artist’s own body. The readaptation of both mythology and anatomy is central to Mynerva’s quintessentially plastic life and practice; one that finds itself in a constant state of radical change. Painting and performance are a fluent oscillation of being as demonstrated in their 2021 exhibition Closing to Open at Ginsberg Gallery in Madrid when the artist had their vagina sutured three quarters of the way shut, allowing only for the flow of their bodily fluids to function as necessary. The corporeal roles of masculine and feminine are constantly being subverted and abstracted in works that bleed, scratch, beguile, and thrust their way through the patriarchal canon with an air of wanton ecstasy. The binary creation myth was recently addressed in Mynerva’s first UK solo exhibition Bone of My Bones Flesh of My Flesh at Gathering London earlier this year, introducing many for the first time to the role of Lilith in Judaic and Mesopotamian folklore as Adam’s first wife who was created from the same clay (equal in nature) as her husband. Her pitiable fate varies from one myth to the next, but the creation of a second wife (Eve) from his rib remains consistent. The artist’s decision to remove Adam’s body from their own for The Original Riot demonstrates the power to readapt our personal realities at will. It is a reflection of the agency that we unwittingly deny ourselves when we allow allegory to shape our internalized perspectives. The following interview was conducted in Spanish and is presented here in its original form, followed by its English translation.

JESUS NEBREDA GALINDEZ: Quiero empezar con cómo te convertiste en artista. ¿Hubo un punto de inflexión en tu vida que te llevó a elegir este camino?

WYNNIE MYNERVA: Creo que la inclinación por hacer arte solo fluyó. Siempre he sido una persona con necesidad inventiva e inquieta. Algo que fue determinante y por la cual me acerqué al arte, fue la sensación de no sentirme dentro de mi cuerpo. Recuerdo desde niña verme como “otro ser” que me miraba desde lejos, esa sensación aún me persigue y se ha convertido en un espacio, y dentro de ese espacio estoy ejecutando diferentes simulaciones y constantemente deconstruyéndome en  imágenes. Es por eso que mi trabajo toca temas íntimos pero también universales, la existencia, el disfrute, el dolor, el cuerpo, la carne, la sexualidad. El arte está plagado de pequeños milagros porque no existe una forma fija de creación, y esa idea me seduce.

GALINDEZ: Los tonos rosas, rojos, marrones y piel de melocotón dominan su trabajo anterior. ¿Puedes hablar sobre tu paleta de colores y cómo llegaste a su desarrollo?

MYNERVA: El color para un pintor es como una bocanada de aire, puede medir la temperatura que atraviesan las emociones y la atmosfera de su tiempo. Trabajo en rojos, marrones y rosas, pero también he vuelto a utilizar el negro que lo había casi había desaparecido de mi obra, siento en general una sensación de retornar a tonos más oscuros. Luego que por sorpresa dentro de la pandemia mis colores estallarán en luz por pasar tanto tiempo observando todo desde lo digital y las redes sociales. 

GALINDEZ: ¿Cómo se siente estar exhibiendo su trabajo en el New Museum? ¿Crees que sigue siendo relevante el hablar de centro y periferia dentro de la escena artística? ¿O por el contrario, la era de internet ha roto para siempre estas históricas barreras geográficas?

MYNERVA: Estoy un poco nerviose. Definitivamente. Especialmente trabajando por primera vez con un museo y uno tan importante como es el New Museum en Nueva York. Siento que es una acumulación de placer y trabajo por mis convicciones lo que hizo que yo esté aquí ahora. Pienso que es relevante no solo que estoy aquí, sino con quiénes estoy, y con esto quiero responder a tu pregunta sobre centro y periferia. Es importante a quiénes he nombrado en mis proyectos y quiénes me han llevado a pensar de esta manera y no de otra. Siento que es fundamental aún hacer referencia a los sistemas sociales, políticos y económicos que nos condensan. La era del internet no ha roto estas barreras, ha generado una sensación placebo para aliviar la impresión de desigualdad en la escena artística. 

GALINDEZ: Estarás montando la pintura más grande que el museo ha presentado en su historia. ¿Por qué la escala de esta pieza fue tan importante para ti?

MYNERVA: El espacio de exhibición es para mí como un escenario. Las pinturas se convierten en el paisaje, y me interesa abarcarlo todo con la escala, los espectadores dan inicio a la función con sus cuerpos. La pintura es el marco arquitectónico que ofrezco al público. Es la propia obra que induce al cuerpo a recorrerla. La escala te envuelve y está diseñada de forma específica, no es trasladable, por tanto es una experiencia singular. La pintura deja de ser un objeto coleccionable para convertirse en geografía.

GALINDEZ: Tu maravillosa exposición Bone of My Bones, Flesh of my Flesh en el Gathering de Londres abordaba no solo la historia de Adán y Eva sino que se adentraba en territorios mucho más desconocidos, hablamos del mito de Lilith. Tu nueva obra, The Original Riot—dios me encanta el título—reinterpreta y se sumerge en esta inquietante alegoría. ¿Puedes contarnos cómo fue el proceso de quitarte una costilla y por qué cobra tanta significación en esta obra?

MYNERVA: Me enteré de la oportunidad de exhibir en el New Museum en medio de la preparación de Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh en Londres, y supe que este sería el espacio para desenlace de este proyecto: la extracción de mi costilla de Adán. Ha sido un proceso largo y estoy tratando de mantener un buen equilibrio, que un proyecto no se mueva demasiado rápido o demasiado lento, pensar como en el cine, que el tiempo es un elemento, y el tiempo de recuperación de mi cuerpo también tiene belleza.

En The Original Riot hay más de una historia revuelta. Parto de la mitología del génesis de Adán y Eva, Eva creada a partir de la costilla de Adán para servirle. Antes que Eva existió otra figura femenina de nombre Lilith que desafiaría a Adán y se negaría a reproducirse, por lo cual Dios la castigaría convirtiendo su vagina en  una llama azul eterna y la expulsaría del paraíso hacia el infierno. En The Original Riot que es la segunda entrega de mi versión de esta historia, las dos primeras figuras femeninas se conocen y pactan una alianza. Como prueba de esa alianza, Eva se quita la costilla de Adán y se la entrega a Lilith. Esta costilla estará presente en la exhibición a modo de reliquia, que es la presencia materializada de un hecho sagrado. La extracción de mi propia costilla y su uso para esta exhibición es brindar mi cuerpo como parte de esta revuelta. Sacar el cuerpo del otro de mi propio cuerpo.

 

dress: Loewe
bangles: Dinosaur Designs

 

GALINDEZ: Siento curiosidad por la íntima relación entre tu cuerpo y tu arte. Esta no es la primera vez que realiza modificaciones en su cuerpo como parte de su práctica. Cuando se trata de tu cuerpo y tu práctica, ¿dónde comienza uno y termina el otro?

MYNERVA: Puedo visualizarme como una persona que ha aprendido a vivir con un cuerpo herido, en una sociedad agitada. Siempre regreso desde el arte a buscar esas señales, no como turista de mis propias experiencias, ni para nombrar mis desastres personales, sino buscando  herramientas que tengan la capacidad de sanar. Pienso que trabajar en el cuerpo de hoy es trabajar en el cuerpo del futuro. Y es así como veo mis proyectos, conectando a través de lo real, la materialidad y su red de significados en la historia del arte y la humanidad. El arte tiene sentido si incide en la vida y es aplicable para una transformación social. Mi vida y mi trabajo tienen una dinámica fluida.

GALINDEZ: Tu obra está cargada de corporeidad y es cierto que los rituales del cuerpo hablan de una manera intrínseca y sin engaños de nuestras herencias culturales y sistemas sociales heredados. ¿Qué es para ti la moda? ¿Crees que es una forma de disfrazarse, o quizás ser la forma más alta y representativa de representación personal?

MYNERVA: La moda es juego encantador, pero también es una cárcel. A mí me gusta la moda del desafío, aquello que es difícil de usar, el taconazo, las plataformas y hacer malabares con los pies. Hay algo masoquista en usar corset apretado y látex en verano. Verme falsa y producida. Hay que divertirse pienso o si no se convierte en un conjunto de reglas elitistas, se puede sufrir mucho en las cárceles de las marcas y el buen vestir. Como siempre, lo correcto se apodera del placer, y salen a las calles los policías de la moda. Yo en la moda no tengo más compromiso a levantar miradas, me encanta.

GALINDEZ: ¿Cómo te sientes representada por los medios? ¿Algo qué alegar que haya sido malinterpretado?

MYNERVA: Siempre soy una persona completamente diferente presentándome. Todos estamos en constante cambio, una transición hasta la hora de la muerte. Pero luego también estoy empujando de forma abstracta mi cuerpo hacia afuera y mi entorno, de forma imperfecta y defectuosa. Muchas veces se ha entendido mi obra solo como provocadora, y la verdad solo se me ocurren soluciones radicales para cambios radicales.

GALINDEZ: En ese caso, ¿dónde vamos a ver a Wynnie Mynerva en el futuro?

MYNERVA: Me encantaría lanzar una productora de porno, ¿te imaginas? 

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs
skirt and leg piece: Sarah Aphrodite
bangles: Dinosaur Designs
shoes: stylist’s own

JESUS NEBREDA GALINDEZ: I want to start with how you became an artist? Was there a tipping point in your life that led to you choosing this path?

MYNERVA: I think the urge to make art just flowed. I have always been a person with an inventive and restless need. The determining thing that drew me to art was the sensation of not feeling inside my body. I remember since I was a child seeing myself as "another being" who was looking at me from afar. That feeling still haunts me. It has become a space within which I am running different simulations and constantly deconstructing myself into images. That is why my work touches on the intimate, but also other universal themes: existence, enjoyment, pain, the body, flesh, sexuality. Art is full of small miracles because there is no fixed form of creation, and that idea seduces me.

GALINDEZ: Pinks, reds, browns, and peachy flesh tones dominate your previous work. Can you talk about your color palette and how you came about its development?

MYNERVA: Color for a painter is like a gust of air. It can measure the temperature of their emotions and the atmosphere of their time. I work in reds, browns and pinks, but I have also gone back to using the black that had almost disappeared from my work. In general, I feel a sensation of returning to darker tones. Then, by surprise, in the pandemic, my colors burst into light because I was spending so much time observing everything from digital and social networks.

GALINDEZ: How does it feel to present your work at the New Museum? Is it still relevant to talk about the art scene as having a center and a periphery, or on the contrary, has the internet finally broken the constraints of geographical significance?

MYNERVA: I'm a little nervous. Definitely. Especially working with a museum for the first time and one as important as the New Museum in New York. I feel that it is an accumulation of pleasure and work for my convictions that has brought me here now. I think it is relevant not only that I am here, but who I am here with, and with this I want to answer your question about center and periphery. It is important to those who I have named in my projects and who have led me to think this way and not another. I feel that it is still fundamental to acknowledge the social, political and economic systems that condense us. The internet age has not broken these barriers, it has generated a placebo sensation to alleviate the impression of inequality in the art scene.

 

dress and shoes: Loewe
bangles: Dinosaur Designs

 

GALINDEZ: You will be mounting the largest painting that the museum has ever presented in its history. Why was the scale of this piece so important to you?

MYNERVA: The exhibition space is like a stage for me. The paintings become the landscape, and I am interested in encompassing everything with the scale. The spectators start the performance with their bodies. Painting is the architectural framework that I offer to the public. It is the work itself that induces the body to go through it. The scale surrounds you and is specifically designed, it is not portable, therefore it is a unique experience. It ceases to be a collectible object in order to become geography.

GALINDEZ: Your wonderful exhibition Bone of My Bones, Flesh of my Flesh at Gathering in London addressed not only the story of Adam and Eve but also delved into much more unknown territory, the myth of Lilith. Your new work, The Original Riot—God, I love the title—reinterprets and plunges into this disturbing allegory. Can you tell us about the process of removing a rib and why it has such significance in this work?

MYNERVA: I heard about the opportunity to exhibit at the New Museum in the midst of preparing Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh in London, and knew that this would be the space for the dénouement of this project: the removal of my Adam's rib. It has been a long process, and I am trying to maintain a good balance so that the project does not move too quickly or too slowly, to think like in the cinema, that time is an element, and my body’s time of recovery also holds beauty.

In The Original Riot, there is more than one scrambled story. I start with the mythology from Genesis of Adam and Eve, when Eve was created from Adam's rib to serve him. Before Eve, there was another female figure named Lilith who would defy Adam and refuse to reproduce, for which God punished her by turning her vagina into an eternal blue flame and expelling her from paradise to hell. In The Original Riot, which is the second installment of my version of this story, the first two female figures meet and agree to an alliance. As proof of that alliance, Eve removes Adam's rib and gives it to Lilith. This rib will be present in the exhibition as a relic, which is the materialized presence of a sacred fact. The removal of my own rib and its use for this exhibition is to offer my body as part of this revolt. It’s a removal of the other's body from my own body.

GALINDEZ: I’m curious about the intimate relationship between your body and your art. This isn’t the first time that you’ve made modifications to your body as a part of your practice. When it comes to your body and your practice, where does one start and the other end?

MYNERVA: I can visualize myself as a person who has learned to live with a wounded body in a troubled society. I always return from art to look for those signs, not as a tourist of my own experiences, nor to name my personal disasters, but looking for tools that have the ability to heal. I think that working on the body of today is working on the body of the future. And this is how I see my projects, connecting through reality, materiality and its network of meanings in the history of art and humanity. Art makes sense if it affects life and is applicable for a social transformation. My life and my work have a fluid dynamic.

 

top and skirt: Acne Studios

 

GALINDEZ: Your work is charged with corporeality and the way that our bodily rituals relate to our respective cultural heritages and social systems. Can you talk about the role of fashion and the body? Do you think it is a form of disguise, or might it be the highest and most representative form of personal representation?

MYNERVA: Fashion is a charming game, but it is also a prison. I like fashion’s challenges, things that are difficult to wear, like heels, platforms, and juggling with your feet. There's something masochistic about wearing a tight corset and latex in the summer. To see me fake and produced. You have to have fun, or else it becomes a set of elitist rules. You can suffer a lot in the prisons of brands and good dressing. As always, the right thing takes over pleasure, and the fashion police take to the streets. In fashion, I have no commitment to draw eyes. I love it.

GALINDEZ: Would you say there are any misconceptions about you as a person or about your art that you feel the need to correct, or do you feel properly represented by the media thus far?

MYNERVA: I'm always introducing myself as a completely different person. We are all in constant change, a transition until the hour of death. But then, I am also abstractly pushing my body and my environment outward, imperfectly and defectively. My work has often been understood only as provocative, and the truth is that I can only come up with radical solutions for radical changes.

GALINDEZ: In that case, where are we going to see Wynnie Mynerva in the future?

MYNERVA: I would love to launch a porn production company. Can you imagine?

Wynnie Mynerva: The Original Riot is on view through September 17 @ New Museum 235 Bowery, New York

Sexual Pleasure to Death: An Interview of Fawn Rogers on Her Series "The World is Your Oyster"

Fawn Rogers
Jestope, 2022

interview by Millen Brown-Ewens
hair by Justin Inman
makeup by Niohuru X
all images copyright Fawn Rogers

MILLEN BROWN-EWENS: Could you start by telling me a little bit about the paintings in your upcoming solo exhibition Burn, Gleam, Shine in Beijing with Galerie Marguo in July. 

FAWN ROGERS: The work is from a series called The World is Your Oyster. The paintings are larger-than-life representations of sea personalities, which invite the viewer to dwell on the unbuilt world, death, and sex. Photorealistic from afar, at a closer view they are composed of painterly shapes and forms. They are seductive, erotic paintings that celebrate female sexuality. But I hope people will consider their wider resonances too. Human intervention in their cultivation has changed the primary process of their creation and relationships. Eroticism in this time is fraught with scary implications. We are so atomized as a species and removed from our origins that placing sexuality alongside environmental destruction almost feels forbidden, but I like things that feel forbidden.

BROWN-EWENS: What is the significance of the erotic and ostentatious image of the oyster in your paintings and how do you think this offers a critique of anthropocentrism? 

ROGERS: I can’t help but to dismantle anthropocentrism in my work. At times it feels like a burden I was born with, it’s my reality, but essentially, I’m trying to find harmony through my work. The World is Your Oyster pays homage to these idiosyncratic and complex forms, inviting viewers to consider life, sex, and death simultaneously. While oysters are commonly considered luxurious rarities forged by nature, like many things, we have subverted the organic process of their creation. The oysters are harvested and pearls cultivated. An excision made to the oyster's flesh assaults the viewers' senses; ultimately this work is both violent and sensual, and at the center of these contradictions, the oyster is a symbol of lust, pleasure, opulence, and indulgence, all-consuming and offered up for consumption, a literal embodiment of the anthropocentric. 

Oysters are both very fragile and highly sensual. It’s so easy to forget about the suffering of other lifeforms, they all want to live just as much as we do. The spider in the shower, let it live or kill it? I’m trying to place the human in patchworks of vibrant ecologies. I want to feel the delicacy and complexity of the tangled tension and vulnerable webs of life that surround us. This is connected to pleasure too. Our society represses sexuality, especially female sexuality, at the same time as it regards other life forms as unimportant. It is the same violent and disregarding gesture. It’s ostentatious to even be alive. Human existence is really a volatile party at the expense of all other life. Our role is both hilariously small and frighteningly disastrous. I try to call attention to expanding empathy for all life and not give up—dark humor helps. 

BROWN-EWENS: Can you describe the conflicts between human nature and the natural world that arise in your practice?

ROGERS: It’s not just my practice, it’s my internal conflict because it’s how I view our world. I am trying to be present in a world that is being destroyed and full of suffering, and I am part of that destruction. When I paint a massive clam floating on a brightly colored, monochromatic background with its plump tongue sticking out, it’s darkly funny to me. It’s both sexy and gross to look at, and I have to kill it, consciously or unconsciously, to survive. We are supposed to have a conscience, and you’d think we would use it for creating a better world, but we don’t. Instead, let's go to Mars. It’s grimly ironic.

A good example from my practice is a work entitled R.I.P., a re-envisioning of the game of chess with chessmen depicted as sculptures of recently extinct animals. Black and white patina bronze on an oversized faux fur board, the animals are presented with regal dignity and personality. Each sculpture has material weight and nobility. Chess is a game of triumph, but triumph is a corollary of conquest. It is an enduring artifact of strategy, competition, domination, and has long been admired as a bastion of logic and order, but it is, at its core, a game of war, predicated on machinations of violence and obliteration. The game’s colonial history is traceable from ancient India, to the Muslim world, to imperial civilizations in Europe and northern Asia. Coupled with an emphasis on dominance, chess finds fresh implications in the contemporary subjugation of the natural world. Even the historical styles of chess—Romantic, Scientific, Hypermodern, and New Dynamism—allude to shifting cultural values and power structures, concluding, perhaps, with the game’s association with technology and artificial intelligence.

Chess has also long held a place of fascination for artists. Matisse, Man Ray, Duchamp, Paul Klee, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread have all engaged with the game of chess. Jake and Dinos Chapman in their 2003, Chess Set, give resonant form to pre-adolescent male obsessions with fantasy forms of conflict, violence, and mutation. I wanted to repurpose a familiar form. In its prescient entanglements of order and chaos, civility and savagery, R.I.P. presses past a playful exploration of anthro-ecological history and evades purely dogmatic, observational, or elegiac orientations. The viewer becomes a player, autonomous yet complicit: a participant in the Anthropocene, at once a witness and contributor to a legacy of humanity, immortalization, and extinction.

Fawn Rogers
Free of God, 2021
oil on canvas
65 x 85 inches

BROWN-EWENS: What is ecofeminism and why is it important to distinguish?

ROGERS: I believe that the forces of patriarchy and everyone that support it oppress female-identifying and non-binary people, and they also exploit the natural world. At the same time, though, I feel that all people hold responsibility for our huge, sad state. For me, my work is liberatory. It makes me aware of the powers that emerge between people, and the world’s ecosystems. I am interested in a future evolution of humanity with empathy, less repression and destruction. In this geological era, our planet is a giant crime scene and we are all implicated. I am interested in finding ways to unleash emancipatory and sensual possibilities that may embed us more deeply in actuality.

BROWN-EWENS: Evocative titles add an additional layer to these pieces, calling on historical and pop cultural imagery such as Our Lady of Guadalupe for symbolic imagery. Could you talk a little bit about this piece in particular and its narrative within the series? 

ROGERS: I find the concept of the Virgin Mary to be repressive. The idea of virginity as sacred and virtuous is a denial of the power of sexuality. I was interested in embracing Mary as utterly human. I wanted to free her from oppressive ideas that are antithetical to human equality. In this painting, you are looking at Mary’s giant sex. But it is not a desecration. I see it as a celebration of reality, a way of honoring life. I wanted to subvert the myths that have been written by men and supported by women, myths that have oppressed women across history. Poor Eve. Poor you, poor me! Ultimately, these ideas oppress everyone. 

BROWN-EWENS: Your style incorporates hyperrealism with conceptualism to create these pillowy, silky scenes. Could you tell me a little bit about the interaction of these styles and practically how you set about depicting them?

ROGERS: I like the interplay between the representational qualities of painting and scale. My paintings of oysters teeter between realism and abstraction, depending on your point of view. They are my mandalas with a prayer, but I’m not religious. Before these paintings, however, I created a body of works called Eat You Eat Me, a two-channel video, The World is Your Oyster, then another series called Poisonous Harmony—all flirting with ideas that would come together in these current paintings. It was at this point when I found myself wanting to create these giant, sexy, wet, gooey oysters and through that deep dive arrived at wanting to have a visceral experience up close and personal with their forms. After painting them in a realistic way, I found the process a bit boring and decided to go back over each of them to take a closer look, and that’s how I ended up with this representational interplay that highlights the oyster’s many complicated and confounding qualities. They can harbor deadly bacteria while being a delicacy and perhaps an aphrodisiac. Plus, there are so many fertile concepts that attach to oysters. The expression “the world is your oyster” is said to young people embarking on life, but it comes from a Shakespeare play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and there is an undertone of violence in how it is used. Dutch historical paintings of feasts often depict oysters and their symbolism for morality or sensuality. During the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919, oyster beds were raided because they were thought to help prevent the disease. Oysters span everything from sexual pleasure to death, environmental violence and luxury consumption to femininity. They are even being used to build storm barriers in New York. 

 

Fawn Rogers
Comet Tail #3, 2022
oil on canvas
14 x 11 inches

 

BROWN-EWENS: I’m intrigued by your photo series which you have described as exploring your Cherokee heritage. Do you think your ancestry has influenced your dedication and attentiveness to the natural world?

ROGERS: These photographic images were the start of my exploration into my Cherokee heritage. It is an oppressive history and is connected with a violent removal from the unbuilt world. My Cherokee ancestors walked the Trail of Tears to a reservation in Oklahoma. They became cotton pickers and also collected venomous water moccasin to survive. My great-grandmother was removed from her mother and placed in a home with European settlers. Her daughter, my grandmother, eventually made her way to the Oregon coast, where oysters were and still are harvested. To be free of the shame they lived with, because they hid their history, I chose to be naked in these images, and the photos contain symbolic details: horses, eagle feathers, pearls, handprints. If there is a single symbol for humanity it is the image of the human handprint. It can be seen on every continent and across all ages. The pearls are also fascinating. Everything from the history of the pearl with First Nations people to the way they are formed from irritants to gems. 

BROWN-EWENS: What do you hope people take from this work?

ROGERS: I don’t expect any particular response. Maybe I hope people might react to this series in a way that is visceral. I want the paintings to draw you in and spit you back out. I do hope the collection will trigger thoughts about the fragility of life and the equality of all people. The splendor of sex. The beauty of the pussy! 

BROWN-EWENS: I understand you’re set to have a busy year. What else have you got coming up?

ROGERS: June 24th, I’m excited to be included in the group show, Beach, at Nino Mier in New York. I just finished five group shows across Asia, the US, and Europe, including a Sotheby’s benefit auction curated by Nadya Tolokonnikova, who cofounded Pussy Riot. I also have an exhibition with Penske Projects curated by Sophia Penske at Phillips, which just closed in LA along with Boil, Toil & Trouble in Chicago curated by Zoe Lukov. In Beijing with Galerie Marguo, coming up July 13th is a solo exhibition titled Burn, Gleam, Shine. I have another solo in September titled GODOG in Los Angeles with sculpture, paintings and neon curated by Michael Slenske at Lauren Powell Projects. I’m also working on a new body of work, going from surf to turf and will be showing video, paintings, and sculpture with Galerie Marguo for a solo exhibition in Paris in October titled Come Ruin or Rapture. So we’ll see what happens after that!

 

Fawn Rogers
The Bee, 2023

 

Nothing Is Fixed: An Interview of Edoardo Monti on His Artist Residency in Brescia, Italy

 

interview by Lara Monro

Edoardo Monti is the force of nature behind the Artist Residency, Palazzo Monti. You will find the historical 13th-century palazzo in the Northern Lombardy Region of Italy, in the city of Brescia, halfway between Milan and Verona. Adorned with frescoes from 1750, the palazzo is a unique, utopian space that was purchased by Edoardo’s grandfather in the 1960s. It brings to mind a real life master’s painting, emulating Baroque grandeur paired with a splash of contemporary design and artistic influence. 

Monti’s penchant for collecting art began at the ripe age of fourteen. With a modest budget and keen eye, he began making connections in the Italian art world, initially with local galleries and artists. This passion has continued to evolve, as has his taste. In 2017, after a decade of working in fashion for Stella McCartney, Monti turned his dream vision into a reality: an artist residency, which captures the imagination of a new generation of artists and champions a dialogue between the past, present, and future. 

Every year, Monti invites three international artists to stay for 4 - 6 weeks at a time. Since 2017, over 200 artists, including Cristina BanBan, Somaya Critchlow, Charlotte Edey, and Henry Hussey have attended Palazzo Monti. 

As the residency’s reputation continues to grow within the international contemporary art world, so does the fierce competition for places, with over 400 applications per month; not to mention the impressive board members and honorary directors, which includes the founder of Great Women Artists Katy Hessel. 

The palazzo’s aesthetic, its connection to Italy’s Renaissance and the desirable location are enough to convince us that it is the preeminent utopia when it comes to artist residencies. I spoke with Edoardo to learn more about his journey with the palazzo and to understand in more detail his personal definition of utopia, and how he connects this to the palazzo Monti Artist Residency.

LARA MONRO: Do you see the Palazzo Monti Residency as a utopia? 

EDOARDO MONTI: I know that I live in a beautiful and lavish palazzo, but I am a very down to earth person! What really interests me is the production aspect, what's behind a piece of art, which can be quite complex, but also very rewarding once you become aware of the whole process. The reason why I'm saying this is because a couple of years ago I curated a show in Brussels called Hétérotopie. This is a term coined by the French writer and philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an alternative model of utopia defined by the spaces that we live in. It describes certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming.  

I like this approach to defining utopia as I feel it is more down to earth. It highlights spaces within the world that we exist in yet these spaces have different rules that you can only make sense of if you live within the spaces. I would like to insert this concept to the residency, and in particular, parts of the palazzo to this style of utopia—a physical utopian space.

That said, in some ways, the palazzo also carries traditional connotations of being a utopia. It's not a dream world that I aspire to live in, but I have the luck to be present in this particular utopian world every day. It's a building that's been around for 800 years that has decorated and adapted over the centuries with style, passion, and love. Think of all the families who have been here and the memories that have been made. It has a very positive energy. Apart from a hotel, who houses creatives for a month at a time? It fits this notion of being a very special world with its own rules. There's rooms for sleeping, there's rooms for working, there's communal areas, there's a communal kitchen. The balance that's created throughout the palazzo changes every month because the residency is built on a program that allows for artists, to check in, connect creatively, and then check out. And then it happens, again and again, over and over. For me, this idea of utopia is directed towards making this physical project the best it can be—continuing to grow it and offer a positive environment where creatives can flourish. 

MONRO: Can you tell me about your artist selection process? 

MONTI: We have an executive board and also an honorary board of directors. The executives are based in London, New York, Paris and Korea. Between us, we go through a selection process. This includes meeting artists in person or traveling. As a team we speak almost on a daily basis. We do lots of research. Every three months, we meet online to go through the applications. We have a very hands-on approach. 

In 2021, we established an honorary board of directors. We looked into the archetypes of the main figures that feature in the creative world; the collector, the curator, the gallery professional, designers. The role of the honorary director is to mentor one artist of their choice per year. It's a great opportunity for the artists to ask questions about the market, curatorial direction, and so on. 

MONRO: You want to provide the artist with a sense of liberty in the way you curate the palazzo’s interior. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

MONTI: There are three main design strands; my grandparents pieces; I’m sitting at my grandfather’s desk as we speak and the bar that we have, a corner bar, is also from my grandparents. So, we have items that come from the family. Then, we have pieces that were simply acquired out of need; lighting features or tables, beds, and so on. The third strand is either commissions from resident designers or artists creating something specifically for the space. Because of this, the palazzo has been evolving over the years. Nothing is fixed—we are flexible and able to move most things around in the palazzo which gives a great sense of freedom for the artists who want to create something here. It is a very dynamic space. 

MONRO: Are there are any common threads that run through the work of the residents?

MONTI: I mean, we intentionally promote complete liberty for the artist to either continue their practice or explore new mediums, or continue with their existing medium but in a new/different way. I think that's part of the beauty because we don't sell the works, we're not a gallery or a museum. So, this leaves complete, free reign for the artists to fully delve into and express their creativity. There are a few recurring elements. I’ve had a dog for the past three years and sometimes she pops up in the paintings. I myself sometimes appear in works also. The sky is definitely a great influence. All of the studios are facing west, which is where the sun sets. There's a lot of beautiful sunset colors in many of the paintings and sculptures. So, without anything being forced, there is definitely a lot of inspiration coming from the palazzo and surrounding areas. 

MONRO: You began collecting art at the age of fourteen, what sort of art were you interested in then, and do you still have a similar taste now? 

MONTI: I was very young and I had a very small budget, so I would acquire small prints or various small paintings. Owning multiple small works taught me a lot. Having a chance to see and appreciate the works you have acquired on your wall is priceless. I don't come from a family of collectors. I was the first one to start this passion/obsession. I was doing small jobs while at high school to earn some money, which allowed me to create a relationship with some local galleries and artists. I would say I was consistent in my taste in that I always went for figurative sculpture and I think this has somewhat stayed the same as I am still fascinated by the human figure. It's very cute looking back at what I collected at the beginning and comparing it to what I've been collecting over the past years. It’s interesting, and hugely personal to see how my eye and interests have evolved.

Cultivating a Circular Practice: An Interview of Louise Frances Smith

Louise Frances Smith
Collect install Assemblage no1 oyster shells, 2023 (detail)
mixed media including clay and crushed oyster shells
photograph by Yeshen Venema



interview by Lara Monro



In the context of art history, sustainable ways of creating have been around since the birth of conceptual art in the 1960s. Take German artist, Nils-Udo, whose plant creations placed in nature were left to develop and subsequently disappear as a way of commenting on the links between nature and humanity. Today, as we are faced with the sobering realities of humankind’s impact on the planet, environmentally-conscious art forms are becoming increasingly widespread. By working with found objects, natural and upcycled materials, and through processes that intentionally avoid damage to the Earth’s resources, artists are using their creative expression to highlight environmental degradation and the stark reality of climate change. 

Margate-based artist Louise Frances Smith worked mainly with clay until she became increasingly concerned and frustrated with the unsustainable plastic packaging used to store her medium of choice. After conducting considerable research, it became clear to her that it was not possible to naturally source clay from her local area, so she decided to get creative and utilize what was available, better yet, she used what was in abundance: seaweed and oyster shells. Smith has spent the last two years collecting and experimenting with both as part of her newly adopted approach to creating sustainable work. 

This year, as part of Somerset House’s 2023 Collect, Smith exhibited Sargassum Tide, a new body of work that examines wireweed seaweed and Pacific oysters, two non-native species thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change. She subsequently presented the series in a solo show at The Margate School where she facilitated workshops on how to work with sustainable materials in collaboration with community groups, families, and creative practitioners. 

In the following interview, Smith shares her journey with adopting a sustainable art practice, discusses the scientists, artists, and experts that have inspired her, and where she hopes to take her sustainable practice in the future.  

LARA MONRO: You began your creative practice working with clay to create sculptural works. What initially drew you to this medium? 

LOUISE FRANCES SMITH: My first encounter with clay was on my degree at Kingston University. It was a Fine Art degree so I took advantage of being able to play with different materials—I worked for a while with latex, paper pulp, drawing, and printing. Then in my third year, one of our visiting lecturers ran a clay workshop. After my initial frustration with this new medium, I quickly fell in love with it because you can do so much; I love its tactile qualities. There is so much scope when working with clay and the different stages of making—dipping in slip, adding glaze, creating textures, casting, carving, moulding, slab building, coiling, there are so many possibilities. I enjoy being able to combine clay with other materials too and I’m keen to continue exploring this in my work.

 

Studio portrait of Louise Frances Smith
photograph by Stuart Leech

 

MONRO: In recent years you have introduced sustainable, bio and found materials into your practice. Can you tell me about this development—what was the catalyst for the step change? 

SMITH: Covid and the 2020 lockdowns, a catalyst for so many things. My place of work was closed and I was very lucky that my daily walks allowed me to explore 15 - 20 minutes down the road to the Margate coastline. I’ve always been drawn to my surrounding landscapes and my work has been influenced by the coastline, but this was a deeper connection because it became a part of my daily routine. I made a body of work called Fragments of Isolation, Margate where I was starting to look closely at the patterns of the landscape, both natural and man-made, and making collages from photographs and drawings of my walks. When I started to translate these drawings into clay there was a disconnect when I was pulling clay out of a plastic bag. I knew this material (clay) came from the ground, but I didn’t know how to go about looking for it. After being successful in applying for Arts Council England ‘DYCP’ funding, I learned how to dig my own clay via two incredible tutors over zoom, Rosanna Martin and Nina Salsotto Cassina (Unurgent Argilla). I soon discovered there is no clay in Margate, so I started to look at what materials there were along the coastline and seaweed was one which is in abundance—this led to research into biomaterials. I was very inspired by a Material Matters podcast with Julia Lohmann, from The Department of Seaweed, who I was also lucky to have a mentorship session with. There are a lot of incredible artists and designers working sustainably who have inspired me to continue this journey in my own practice.

MONRO: What is your process for sourcing your found objects/materials? 

SMITH: I take a bag with me on my daily walks and pick up anything from the beach that I find intriguing—like a strange piece of rock or a beautiful shell. I also try to collect any litter I see when I’m doing this too; there are always fishing nets tangled in with seaweed. I don’t use any of this in my work at the moment, it's mainly the natural objects I use. I only collect seaweed that’s washed up on the beach, most found on Margate beaches can be collected from April to September (to allow nesting birds to take the seaweed over winter) but the seaweed I have recently been working with is an aggressive, invasive species (wireweed), so I have been allowed to collect that over winter months too. I make sure to shake it out before bagging it so I’m not taking any little critters home! 

I have also been collecting oyster shells from a local restaurant in Margate, Angela’s. They do not have a use for the shells after the oysters have been eaten so I go and collect them as a waste material to use.

MONRO: How do you incorporate these into your work—do they define how you create a new piece, or inform it? 

SMITH: I think it varies from material to material and what the idea of the work is in my head! I’ve recently learned about Material Driven Design through a brilliant bioplastics course run by Through Objects and Bonnie Hvillum (Natural Materials Studio). It was an interesting concept for me because I think sometimes I have an idea of what I want to make in my head (from my sketchbooks, research) and I’m looking for a way to do so. When you work with clay, you can get it to do so much, in a myriad of ways. Whereas when you work with a new material, it’s fun to experiment and play with what it can do and then bend your idea or concept to adapt with the material’s qualities.

There have been a lot of experiments that I haven’t been able to use. But then, I started to look at these fragments from my experiments and use this ‘waste material’ to make collage. I’m trying to keep a circular practice and consciously ensure there is no waste. So, to answer your question, it is both.

MONRO: Since adopting a sustainable creative practice what have been the most insightful lessons you have learned from being more environmentally conscious? 

SMITH: When I started looking at making my practice more sustainable, I was thinking about the materials I was using and how I was sourcing them, which is really important. But something I hadn’t thought much about was waste from my studio and making processes. There were techniques I was already using that I hadn't thought about but are very important: recycling clay and glazes, finding ways of using firing pieces to reuse in the work in some way. There are so many potters and clay studios who adopt these practices already but might not on the surface appear to have a ‘sustainable practice.’ Waste is the first thing to look at, and also if you can use someone else’s waste, then even better! There is a brilliant book called Wasted by Katie Treggiden that highlights a lot of artists using waste as a material in so many different ways and across different industries. Katie also says that it’s important to stay curious and that it’s okay to be imperfect, and I think that’s really great advice. No one is going to have a totally sustainable practice over night, so it’s all about making small changes and building on that. I am still on my journey, I know I will continue to make mistakes and that there is so much I can improve on. I’m excited to see where my line of enquiry takes me as I continue to embrace these changes. 

MONRO: You recently exhibited Sargassum Tide, a new body of work at Collect 2023. Can you tell me about the series? 

SMITH: The works in Sargassum Tide are made using wireweed seaweed (Sargassum muticum) and Pacific oysters (Magallana gigas). These are two non-native species currently thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change. I wanted to make work that shows the repercussions of human intervention on our fragile coastal ecosystems through the materials. The inspiration for the works comes from epibiosis; the close interaction between two different organisms, the host organism providing an environment for the other which is attached to its living surface. 

Pacific oysters were introduced to the UK for farming in the 1970s. They brought with them wireweed seaweed which was thought to have been attached to the oyster shells. At the time it was believed that it would not flourish, but since the rise in sea temperature, these species can now bloom. My research has led me to conflicting evidence of whether these species are ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ which has been really interesting. I think what drew me to these materials initially, beyond the story of their arrival, was that they are currently in abundance on my local coastline and can be used. 

MONRO: In April you exhibited Sargassum Tide at The Margate School. Was it important for you to showcase the work within the local environment from which most of the inspiration and materials came? 

SMITH: Yes, very important. I was really excited about displaying the works at Collect 23, in such a beautiful ornate building, and to a new audience. But an important part of the project is to highlight the abundance of these materials locally. So it felt important to share what I had collected from the landscape with the local community in Margate. I would love to inspire others to use these materials that are in abundance on our local coastlines, or just to be aware of what is there—to look closer at our local environments. 

Louise Frances Smith
Collect install Assemblage no1 oyster shells, 2023 (detail)
mixed media including clay and crushed oyster shells
photograph by Yeshen_Venema

MONRO: You facilliated workshops on how to create sustainable art works using biomaterials as part of the exhibition at The Margate School with local community groups. Are you keen to pursue this educational element as part of your practice?

SMITH: The workshops I conducted were a combination of making works with biomaterials and also clay workshops where we explored texture, pattern, and shapes from the local coastline. Working with biomaterials requires a bit of extra health and safety precautions so it hasn’t been possible to run these for all of my workshops, but just starting to have these conversations with people and showing them what you can do with biomaterials is really important. I’m really keen to pursue this as part of my artistic practice, and to learn more about what local community groups would like to understand about how to create sustainable work. 

I am also working with a creative digital agency, Studio T, to create a new section of my website that I will update quarterly with interesting content for artists and makers on their journey to having a sustainable practice. So, there will be a recipe for something to make, an interview with another artist, and a short film about a material or process I use in my work. This has all been made possible by an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant I received at the end of last year. 

MONRO: Are there any materials you are interested in experimenting with moving forward? Perhaps there are places in the UK you would like to explore to take inspiration for new work?

SMITH: There are so many possibilities and so many materials to explore! I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of working with biomaterials. I think next, I would love to collaborate with other artists and biodesigners. I am very interested in the texture of the oyster shell pieces so I would like to continue on this and explore how far I can push the material in terms of scale. I still have a passion for clay. There are so many places over the UK where you can dig and process your own, so I would like to continue with this research in the future too. 

In A Forgotten Tongue: An Interview of Mattea Perrotta

Mattea Perrotta
Perdòno, 2023
oil on canvas
57 x 77 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

interview by Lara Monro

Our primary means of conveying meaning is through spoken and written forms, as well as sign language. But what do we do when faced with language barriers, unable to verbally communicate with another/others? Google translate is one option, but what happens when we use our imagination? Or when we explore the imagination of others through our own unique lens?

The earliest civilizations used cave walls as canvases to share their knowledge, beliefs, and stories. For visual artist, Mattea Perrotta, art has become a way of conveying her secrets and vulnerabilities. It has also become a lexicon to connect with others, often from different countries and communities. During her time in Morocco, challenged with learning Arabic but keen to connect with her hosts, she started using drawings to engage with her companions. It was a familiar and natural way of interpreting the world around her. 

A diagnosis of synesthesia at an early age was the catalyst for Perrotta’s need to develop an individual language; mathematical formulas made sense when color coded, as did phone numbers. This subsequently translated into her art form, which began with abstract shapes, defining her earlier career. Perrotta’s practice evolved organically, and in recent years a figurative approach has occupied her canvases as she investigates, questions and challenges the canon of art history referencing the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.

This May, Perrotta is exhibiting in her hometown, Los Angeles, for the first time since moving to Europe five years ago. Her solo show, In A Forgotten Tongue, at Praz Delavallade, signifies a turning point for the artist, harking back to an abstract style whilst continuing her investigation into art historical movements; Baroque, Renaissance and Cubism. Each shape within a canvas, or tapestry work, takes on its own vocabulary, distinguished by color and size. As this is Perrotta’s secret language, we are left with subtle signals and our imaginations to interpret the work.  

In the following interview, the artist explains why she describes her paintings as being similar to lasagna and what she will be researching during her residency this summer at the American Academy Rome.

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me about how your early diagnosis of synesthesia impacted you creative practice?

MATTEA PERROTTA: School didn’t come naturally to me. Mathematics and spelling were incredibly difficult (and still are). I took exams in other rooms than my classmates to have more time. It was really embarrassing as a kid. I would get so nervous before going to school I would throw up. My mom found this hippie healer outside of Los Angeles to help me deal with my nerves and anxiety in elementary school. She asked me what I enjoyed doing in my spare time and I told her I loved to draw. During our meetings I would draw whilst we spoke. While I was drawing with crayons I told her that when I used a particular color I would see a letter or number—that was my earliest introduction into synesthesia. As I got older and understood what synesthesia meant, I began to use it as a learning tool in school. I essentially was able to cheat my way through academia because I created my own unique language through color that had direct associations with letters and numbers. For example, in math, I would color code on my arms equations or formulas. I still use it to this day when I need to remember phone numbers or how to spell something. Recently I began teaching and I share this with my students who  ]might have synesthesia without knowing how it can be used as a learning tool. 

 

Mattea Perrotta
Lingua Madre, 2023
oil on canvas
77 x 57 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

 

MONRO: Do you see all your art as your secret language? 

PERROTTA: Of course. That's the power of abstraction. You can share your deepest secrets and emotions without giving too much away. It’s incredibly liberating. I resist revealing myself. I’m comfortable with secrets. Abstraction allows me to reveal myself, be vulnerable, whilst still having it be my own. I’ve created a language through abstraction where my secrets can breathe on canvas, but behind a veil of form and color. This is the age of diaries, the talk show, the autobiography, social media. Everyone is an online activist—this self and this experience of selfness in its guises and disguises as it addresses language and as it confers secrets and meanings.

MONRO: Can you tell me how your art form has helped you communicate in the different places you have lived over the years?

PERROTTA: The first memory that comes to my mind is when I was living in Morocco. I was an artist in residence below the Atlas Mountains in this very tiny town called Tahanaout. There were two local artists there, Mohammed Mourabiti and Mahi Binebine. Mohammed ran the residency and Mahi had a studio there. I recommend everyone to get to know their work. I lived on site and painted in another studio during Ramadan. We would gather in the evenings and have dinner together. They spoke in Arabic, I attempted to learn the basics as much as possible, but it wasn’t enough for me to communicate. We began drawing during our dinners to express what we wanted to say. One can imagine how long these dinners were speaking through paper and pencil. I’ll never forget it. We sat in a cave underneath his studio exchanging stories about our homes, and our practice. Art can be an amazing tool for communication when we’re in unfamiliar territory. 

MONRO: You will be showcasing a new body of work in your upcoming exhibition, In a Forgotten Tongue. Is the show connected to your last two exhibitions, which examined the canon of art history through the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci? 

PERROTTA: Absolutely. My work always had a heavy influence from Renaissance periods and Picasso’s cubist period. My love for Renaissance painting comes from my time living in Florence after I graduated from [UC] Berkeley. While living there, I studied Renaissance painting and iconography at the Uffizi gallery. In 2018, I moved to Paris and lived near the Picasso museum and would frequent places that he and the surrealists, Dora Maar hung out at. I completely immersed myself in his world and became obsessed with his way of painting and playfulness. That time in Paris for an artist was so special. In recent years—the London years I say—I have been exploring a way to combine the two periods (Baroque and Cubist) into one lens. Research has always been a large part of my practice. Being a traveler keeps me eternally curious about studying the language, traditions and art of where I am, and incorporating that into the work. My paintings are a bit like lasagnas; layers of information I’ve been fed from various places. 

 

Mattea Perrotta
Lo Straniero, 2023
oil on canvas
77 x 57 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

 

MONRO: It seems that the works presented in In a Forgotten Tongue are moving away from your more recent figurative pieces?

PERROTTA: Indeed. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with galleries that allow me to take risks within my work. I’ve always been someone that’s gone against the grain of what is expected to an extent. I was lucky enough to have my first show with abstract paintings and have it be received well, but after that I wanted to continue to explore different realms. Again, traveling feeds me with so much information that I like to digest it in different ways in my work. In a Forgotten Tongue is a full circle period for me. It’s the first show I’ve done in my hometown in five years since I moved to Europe. It feels like the right time to go back to my earlier abstractions because Los Angeles was that for me. The architecture of the city, the light, the colors, history, immigration of cultures feels like one big abstract painting. Then I left and lived in a few different cities that had heavy influences of Renaissance art from churches to medieval cathedrals. Being able to make abstract paintings incorporating these earlier Renaissance traditions—periods of places I’ve lived through a contemporary lens—feels really on a par with where I am right now in my life and my family’s history.

MONRO: You have created tapestry pieces for this show. Were they created by the same weavers you worked with when living in Morocco in 2017? And, what drew you back to creating tapestry works? 

PERROTTA: While I was living in Tahanaout, I became fascinated with materials and mediums. Mohammed and Mahi worked largely with various materials, which opened the floodgates for me to think differently in the studio. On my way there, the airport confiscated my bag of oil paint, so when I arrived in Morocco I didn’t have access to supplies as easily. I began using pigments from the souk as paint. I’d take dirt from my walks and apply it to the canvas. I used the land as a medium. Then, I started thinking more existentially about the painting as a living and breathing being. Morocco is known for their carpets. I met the group of weavers whom I’ve now been working with for the last seven years. The first time I went there with my friend, we got lost three different times, hitch hiked, and had an entire village helping us find the studio. It’s in a very remote town outside of Rabat. I became interested in the way of turning the painting into a livable being, such as a carpet. How it can be enjoyed as a tangible object, eating on it, laying on it, how the painting becomes part of you in a more visceral way. I enjoy the challenge of bringing these instrumental paintings to life, such as my L’Ultima Cena series—making it an interactive and somewhat performative work of art. For the Cena show in Berlin last year, my dear friend Frank Maston composed my paintings into medieval compositions. We released a little cassette for the show. The audio played throughout the entirety of the exhibition. I loved the idea of a painting becoming an invisible feeling that only exists in the ethers. I wanted the paintings to have a voice. My other friend from Bronze Age in London printed a lithograph book of the paintings with text about each apostle. My mother made her famous pasta and we had dinner at the table I had installed for the show. It became a feast of the senses on every level. I really enjoy exploring different territories within my work.

Mattea Perrotta
Perdoni I, 2023
hand dyed, hand sewn wool
57 x 77 in
144.8 x 195.6 cm

MONRO: You will be artist in residence at the American Academy Rome this summer. What inspired you to apply and what will you be working on during your time in the program? 

PERROTTA: AAR has been a place where many artists I’ve admired have resided, such as Philip Guston, Bert Long Jr., Martha Boydenn, Jannis Kounellis, and David Hammons, to name a few. The program gives me an opportunity to live within an artistic community and learn about my peers’ process and practices, immerse myself within the history of those who worked there, and challenge myself to find new ways of approaching my studio time. Rome is one of the greatest cities in the world, the history, art, culture—there’s so much beneath those walls that can be explored 1,000 times over again and I feel as though I’ve only ever managed to scratch the surface. Being able to live and work there will allow me to further dive into my research of connecting the dots between Renaissance and contemporary narratives through art, history, and architecture.

MONRO: Being in different places is a huge part of your identity and creative practice; engaging with different cultures and communities. Are you planning to stay and work in Italy post residency? 

PERROTTA: I am. I’ll be living and working in Naples full time. My father is Italian and I recently got my dual citizenship. I’ve always felt connected to the culture and my family’s heritage. They grew up in a region called Campobasso in a small village as farmers. It’s a beautiful, tiny mountain town not far from a seaside town called Termoli. They value tradition, the piano piano lifestyle, which in Italian means “slowly, slowly.” I really like to transition into that after living in metropolitan cities, to immerse myself in the humility of it, and see where it takes my paintings. There’s so much more to explore and learn. People and places will forever humble and inspire me to be the best version of myself as a person and artist. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to live in such a way and share it with others. 

Mattea Perrotta
Echoing Dialects, 2023
hand dyed, hand sewn wool
77 x 105 in
195.6 x 266.7 cm

In A Forgotten Tongue is on view through June 24 at Praz Delavallade 6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90048

Signifiers of Embodiment: An Interview of Charlotte Edey

 
 


text by Lara Monro
portrait by Brynley Odu Davies


Charlotte Edey is a London-based visual artist who adopts a multidisciplinary practice as a form of personal and political expression. Drawing on a multitude of themes, her work addresses notions of femininity, gender, body politic and mythology. Edey’s tapestry, embroidery and sculptural pieces are extensions of her drawing practice, and her distinct artistic language focuses heavily on symbolism and the investigation of space. Recognized for their surreal dreamscapes and pastel palette, she employs a recurring water motif that takes inspiration from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” which serves as an investigation of ‘hydrofemininity,’ and the belief that our bodies are fundamentally part of the natural world.  

Edey’s newest body of work, Framework, is currently on view at Ginny on Frederick. In this exhibition, a dialogue between each piece has been created by the artist as she examines various ways to blur the boundary between the real and the represented through the motif of the window and frame. Using these as a point of departure, she explores the notion of transparency to identify and differentiate between interior and exterior, public and private. Her intricately detailed—hand sewn and beaded—tapestry works and larger mirrored pieces are symbolic gateways that gently interrogate interior space, identity, and observation. We spoke on the occasion of Framework’s opening to discuss her development in recent years, as well as her interest in the symbolic interplay between windows, frames, and eyes. 

LARA MONRO: You attended The Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School from 2021-2022. How instrumental do you think this period was for your development as an artist? 

CHARLOTTE EDEY: Interestingly, I feel like The Drawing Year allowed me to really consider the relationship between drawing and embroidery in my work. Alternating between observational drawing classes and textiles, I was considering the role of mark-making in embroidery. Satin-stitch embroidery has such a direct relationship to hatching and even blending; layering colors to create tone. Similarly, beading feels like a stippling process. Forging this relationship has made me more ambitious with my embroidery and the works really feel like they now inform the other. 

I was studying during the Covid-19 lockdowns, and I think the restrictions of that time leant a real introspection to my experience. I had some wonderful teachers who really pushed me to contextualize my instincts in drawing. I started working primarily in soft pastel as I’m interested in a sort of unnatural light, and pastel is such a generous medium for a glow. As a lot of my subjects are anthropomorphic, I find an uncanny luminosity lends a kind of autonomy, or agency, to subjects that aren’t always explicitly figurative. 

Installation photography by Stephen James. Courtesy the artist and Ginny on Frederick.

MONRO: You have started to work in very interesting ways with frames; both bespoke and found (often antique). Can you tell me about this new artistic line of inquiry?

EDEY: There are recurring motifs in my work of mirrors and windows as portals to these imagined landscapes. The first bespoke frames were made on The Great Women Artists residency curated by Katy Hessel at Palazzo Monti in 2019; a series of tapestries exploring the transcendent image that referenced the altarpieces in the Baroque churches of Brescia. 

I feel like these methods of display provide an immediate context to the works they house by employing the pre-existing narratives of these objects. I really enjoy the collaborative nature of working with found objects. They are their own archetypes which deeply inform the textiles and drawings, and they imbue them with a sense of both location and time. 

MONRO: Your upcoming show at Ginny on Frederick is titled Framework. Can you talk about the importance/relevance of the frames within the context of the exhibition? 

EDEY: I was interested in interrogating the role that framing plays in my practice for this show. Consequently, Framework takes the motif of the window as the point of departure for a series of works exploring the potency of the window as a symbolic portal. The motif of the window by virtue of its transparency, its flat dimensionality and its frame, is predestined like few other motifs for fundamental reflection on the image and the process of seeing.

Installation photography by Stephen James. Courtesy the artist and Ginny on Frederick.

There’s a passage in Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City[: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone] I often revisit where she states that “windows are thought to be analogous to eyes, as both etymology (wind-eye) and function suggests.” This symbolic interplay between windows, frames and eyes seems the perfect avenue through which to create works that explore interior space and identity.

MONRO: It seems you are beginning to adopt a more immersive approach in the way you exhibit your work. Take the window pieces in Framework, for example, which feel more like installations. Is this something you are looking to explore further? 

EDEY: The process of seeing is so integral to the visual symbolism of the window, it felt essential that the works reflect each other, creating an exchange of looking within the space. I was conscious too of responding to the ceramic tiles of Ginny on Frederick. The framework of the grid forms the underlying structure of both the tapestries themselves and of the panel sash windows that house the drawings. The grids recurring and reflecting throughout the show feels immersive and deeply specific to this space.

MONRO: For Framework you have created beautiful woven jacquard tapestries which you have hand sewn with intricate pearls and glass beads. Can you tell me about this process and where your inspiration came from? 

EDEY: I was considering the role of glass within a window frame. In lieu of a sheet of glass, I wanted to cover the surface of the tapestry in a layer of glass through extensive hand-beading, akin to rainwater on glass panes. There are well over ten thousand beads across the tapestries! The beading is most dense in the highlights, with opalescent, transparent and pure white beads and irregular freshwater pearls creating a luster that echoes the bright light of the drawings. I really enjoyed working into the folds with metallic blacks and dark greens, so even the shadows glimmer. 

The exhibition is accompanied by the most magical original text ‘Soft Pastoral’ by poet Ella Frears, which opens with the line: “The beads collected on the surface like condensation.” The connection she draws between the beading and beads of sweat adds a bodily dimension to the works that I just adore. 

MONRO: You are using the tapestry works to examine the window as the point of intersection between interior and exterior space. Can you tell me more about this?

EDEY: Deleuze discusses the transparency of the window as enforcing “a two-way model of visuality: by framing a private view outward—the 'picture' window—and by framing a public view inward—the 'display' window.” The works in the show are divided by these two realms of public and private, exterior and interior. 

The embroidered tapestry works navigate a controlled visibility. In these intimate ‘display windows,’ the curtains are drawn to the public stage, blurring the interior. The glass beads and freshwater pearls cover the surface, further obfuscating the act of seeing. Conversely, the idea of transparency and observation permeates the drawings in the show. Through the corporeal ‘picture windows,’ the sexual symbolism of spatial openings is explored. Signifiers of embodiment—eyes, mouths, loose sheets—wink and whisper across the anthropomorphic landscapes.

MONRO: Where will you be exhibiting next and do you have any plans to make new work? 

EDEY: I will be exhibiting a new series of works alongside Gal Schindler and Alexandra Metcalfe with Ginny on Frederick at NADA, New York in May. After that, I’m very excited to be working towards a two-person exhibition with Azadeh Elmizadeh at Seaview in Los Angeles and an exhibition with Eigen+Art Lab in Berlin later this year.

Framework is on view through April 22 @ Ginny on Frederick 91-93 Charterhouse St, Barbican, London

Installation photography by Stephen James. Courtesy the artist and Ginny on Frederick.

Skunk Hour: Nikki’s Maloof’s New Paintings Are An Existential Crisis On Canvas

Portrait of Nikki Maloof with Dog Roses (2023). Photographer: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

interview by Oliver Kupper

Nikki Maloof’s domestic tableaux are startling and at the same time humorous reminders of our own existence. Bright, prismatic, dreamlike, her paintings grapple with unexpectedness—freeze-frames before the tragicomedy unfolds. Fragments of a scream before a murder. A foot descending a staircase, a hawk’s talons moments from clutching a dove, a hand behind a curtain. The uncanniness is haunting and visceral. Maloof’s current exhibition, Skunk Hour, now on view at Perrotin gallery in New York until April 15th, explores a new suite of paintings, many of which feature culinary activity in the home, the title of which is borrowed from a Robert Lowell poem of the same name. “I myself am hell;” he writes, “nobody’s here— / only skunks, that search / in the moonlight for a bite to eat.” The following is a short excerpt from an interview that will be published in Autre’s Spring/Summer 2023 issue. 

OLIVER KUPPER: Where are you based these days?

NIKKI MALOOF: I live in Western Mass[achusetts]. My husband is from this area originally, and we would visit a lot when we were still living in the city. About six years ago, we decided to move. So, this is where we live. 

KUPPER: I love that area. It has a weird, mystical quality.

MALOOF: Very hippie-dominated, kind of arty. But also, the colleges bring a lot of young people, so it's a cool place.

KUPPER: I want to start with your chosen medium, which is still life. I'm curious what first attracted you to the medium? 

MALOOF: Well, I went to Indiana University, and it's a very traditional painting school. So, I really learned how to paint from painting still lifes. When you paint something from life, you turn off your brain and you're just doing it. It’s something I would pepper in with other things that I was doing in the past that had more to do with my imagination, and it's just always been there. But, when it came to this body of work, I retreated more into the home as a setting. I started wanting to treat the spaces in a home like a character and not necessarily paint the people that inhabit them. That lended itself to looking to the objects that we surround ourselves with for ways of conveying meaning. I'm very attracted to houses and the things that we compile. I'm always following a little trail of crumbs and one painting will lead to the next. It started off with animals, but then it slowly became about our interaction with the domestic space. 

KUPPER: I think of the Dutch still life painters and how portraiture completely started dropping out of those paintings in this really surreal way. 

MALOOF: For a long time, that kind of painting would not have been the thing that I related to as a more developed painter. As a young painter, I would always walk past those paintings, and it's been an interesting challenge to try and make a still life catch your attention or convey emotion because they're sort of inert.

KUPPER: Even though those paintings are about objects, each object has this deeply spiritual quality. 

MALOOF: When I started to look deeper at those works, I became aware of a whole language that is lost at first when you just think, oh, like fruit, whatever. I find that really intriguing—that there’s little messages all the time.

Nikki Maloof, Skunk Hour, 2022.
Oil on linen, 74 x 114 inch.
Photograph: Guillaume Ziccarelli.
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

KUPPER: Seafood became part of those Dutch still lifes because of their connection to water. In your work, there are also some symbolic notions of seafood. Can you talk a little bit about the symbolism in your work and about some of the different objects that reoccur?

MALOOF: Painting things like seafood began years ago when I was painting a lot of domestic animals—trying to make stand-ins for us. I was thinking about the way that we interact with animals on an everyday basis. One of the biggest ways we interact with animals is by eating them. It's this relationship where we tend to look away really quickly because it can be a weird reckoning, especially when you look at the industry of it. So, I was thinking I should enter the kitchen because that's where we actually interact with animals. I thought it might be a challenge to make a fish seem emotive, and I wanted to borrow from the realm of the Dutch fish paintings, but make it my own by breathing some weird life into them. Fish are such a strange thing, because we don’t feel much for them. Fish ar strange because we feel almost nothing for them, but then they look so alive compared to any other thing that we come in contact with. There's a dark humor there—something that’s kind of ridiculous about it all. Also, painting fish and food is extremely delightful, and I think if something seems weirdly fun, there’s usually some reason that you need to go there. If the desire is there, I usually follow it, and then see if it has any repercussions.

KUPPER: There's also this humorous, dark side to a lot of the work. During the pandemic, and also during the Plague, painting started to become very dark and strange, and people started dealing with their emotions in different ways.

MALOOF: Yeah, I'm really attracted to anything that is on the line. All artforms that are one foot in lightness, one foot in darkness are really intriguing. I feel like that's what it is to be alive. Ideally, you want to be on the light side, but that's an almost impossible place to remain. Being a human, there’s too many factors to grapple with. So, that tone really makes sense to me.

KUPPER: The title of your new show, Skunk Hour, was inspired by a Robert Lowell poem. It’s interesting to hear about an artist’s inspirations outside of painting.

MALOOF: I've been really interested in poetry since grad school. I look to it for answers in a way that I can't with painting. A poem conveys meaning without telling you exactly what the answer is and I found it very freeing when I realized that you don't have to explain everything—that the artwork takes on a life of its own. I like that Robert Lowell poem because you're basically following him as he drives around his town and notices things. He's describing it and slowly coming to terms with his own mind. It goes from being somewhat light to this intense, dark place. And when you're in a space that's so familiar to you, like your home or your neighborhood, those things do occasionally hit you. That’s the whole point of the show: the realization that there's moments in our everyday lives that are so intense, and we notice them, but they’re always in the background, and then we have to move on. Skunk Hour is like nighttime, when we're alone with our thoughts. It’s about the way that we deal with existential experiences in everyday life.

Nikki Maloof, The Cherry Tree,
2022. Oil on linen, 64 x 48 inch.
Photograph: Guillaume Ziccarelli.
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

A Family Gallery: An Interview Of Sow and Tailor's Karen Galloway

 
 

text by Oliver Misraje
portrait by Enio Hernandez

Important things to note about Karen Galloway in no particular order:  Karen is an Aries-Taurus cusp, the name of her gallery, Sow and Tailor, is a zeugma for the space’s origins as a sweatshop in South Central Los Angeles, and, if given the choice of which animal she’d be reincarnated into, she’d choose a cat (her husband and frequent collaborator Greg Ito says he’d be a beaver). 

Sow and Tailor is situated next to a tunnel, under a freeway on Grand Street.  It has elements reminiscent of the urban fantasy genre: It’s a tiny, practically invisible nook, that intermittently  lights up with art and its patrons, both from the neighboring community and art world Westsiders willing to venture east of Western Avenue. Karen’s description of Sow and Tailor as her “little speakeasy” is apt. Greg Ito, has a studio conjoined to the building next door. Their physical proximity reflects a professional dynamic shared between the two: they work and live together, often advising one another, while still possessing firm boundaries between her work and his practice. 

But the naming is more than just a play on words, Sow and Tailor is an ethos firmly posited in nurturing— both as an abstract, moral concept, and a practical strategy towards community and its cultivation.  Take, for example, the gallery’s  trajectory— Karen was seven months pregnant with her daughter Spring when she decided to quit her job as a producer for a notoriously exploitative fast-fashion company: “I had been on set for a shoot with a high-profile rapper since 6 am, while obviously pregnant. I was in pain and still expected to perform manual labor. There was this total disregard for my condition, and after being asked to stay past 2 am, I decided I had enough.” The conception of both her daughter and her gallery were unintentionally, yet symbolically in conjunction with one-another. Karen gave birth to Spring on February 2nd, 2021. Two  months later, Sow and Tailor opened its doors for its inaugural show, Hot Concrete: L.A. Arrangement.

Although initially an outsider to the art-world, Karen credits her mother with nurturing a passion for curation: “I grew up in Pasadena. We were always ballin’ on a budget, but she was a patron for all things culture, especially free, public events, whether that be classical music concerts or Shakespeare in the park. Our mailboxes were constantly stuffed with mail from museums’ or other public works, she knew how to scout out an event.” 

Jaime Muñoz installation

This is all to say Sow and Tailor, as Karen puts it, is “a family affair”, more explicitly expressed in their last show Friends and Family 23’, curated by her nephew, Cairo Pertum.  Karen tells me the concept for the gallery was inspired by Japanese bonsai trees, which translated, means “planted in a container”. At the heart of Sow and Tailor is the question: how can the limitations of physical space help cultivate a flourishing tree? A concept, carried out magnificently, in the ways the gallery, despite its nook-like arrangement, manages to feel more cavernous than its 700 square footing. 

Since its humble beginnings, Sow and Tailor has rapidly cemented itself as a hotspot for emerging artists, receiving institutional recognition usually reserved for legacy galleries—Sow and Tailor is one of the youngest galleries to be accepted into the Armory Collection. But as the gallery continues to grow, its ethos remains firmly planted. Instagram clout doesn’t operate as a currency here, with many of the featured artists being fresh in the embryonic stages of their career. Karen, afterall, is a risk-taker. It takes a certain gusto to abandon your comfy, if ennui-ridden life as a producer to enter the gallery game, just as it takes a bravado to invest in young artists who’ve yet to establish a name for themselves.  

Karen and her gallery tend to keep a busy docket, starting with a solo show featuring the works of Kayla Witt from February 11th until March 25th. Sow and Tailor has also been invited to host a solo presentation of Veronica Fernandez at Frieze LA next week, along with a group booth at Felix, featuring both new and old faces. The gallery will also be holding an off-site curation at the Soho House in West Hollywood for Black History Month, highlighting L.A.’s legacy of African American art.

While the accomplishments, past and future, of Sow and Tailor reflect its growing branches, the roots remain firmly planted. 

Karen Galloway and Greg Ito’s daughter Spring

Wish You Were Here: An Interview of Heather Agyepong on Her Exhibition at the Centre for British Photography

 

The Body Remembers, Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

 

interview by Lara Monro
self-portraits by Heather Agyepong

On Thursday 26 January The Centre for British Photography will open for the first time. Founded by the gallerist and philanthropist, James Hyman, the charitable organization will present free, self-generated exhibitions as well as those led by independent curators and organizations championing the work of British photographers. 

Hyman explains: “We hope that through this initial showcase to make a home for British photography we can, in the long run, develop an independent centre that is self-sustaining with a dedicated National Collection and public program.”

There will be two leading exhibitions, organized in partnership with Fast Forward Photography. Headstrong: Women and Empowerment celebrates photographers based in Britain who have made work concerned with how they are represented, what they are dealing with in their everyday lives and what it means to embrace diversities that challenge the conservative order of a patriarchal society. And, Images of the English at Home takes the viewer on a journey from the street, up the front steps, and into the private spaces of the living room, kitchen and bedroom before sending them out into the back garden. 

Alongside the exhibitions, The Centre will spotlight five British photographers as part of an In Focus display; Natasha Caruana, Jo Spence, Andrew Bruce, Anna Fox and Heather Agyepong. 

Autre’s London editor-at-large, Lara Monro, spoke with the multidisciplinary artist, Heather Agyepong, to discuss her body of work, Wish You Were Here. Commissioned by The Hyman Collection in 2019, the series explores the work of Aida Overton Walker, the celebrated African American vaudeville performer who challenged the rigid and problematic narratives of Black performers. 

LARA MONRO: Wish You Were Here pays homage to the work of Aida Overton Walker who was known as the Queen of the Cake-Walk. How and when did you first come across Walker’s work, and can you tell me more about the Cake-Walk?

HEATHER AGYEPONG: I came across the word Cake-Walk in a script I was reading, googled it, and saw a video of this dance with Black performers doing this high-kicked, structured dance but later found out that it was originally to mock slave owners. I thought to myself, there is a project there. A few weeks later, James Hyman wanted to meet to commission me for some work and proceeded to pour out these postcards of cake walk dancers! Some of the depictions were beautiful but a lot were racist and pretty disgusting. We later discovered someone called Aida Overton Walker who reimagined the dance and was celebrated as a Black, female performer who reclaimed the dance and filled it with grace, preciousness, and technicality. She was my anchor into the work, the woman I felt was calling out to me at the time to reclaim and take space.

Anne Mae,  Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

MONRO: Your images are layered with symbolism to illicit a conversation about the boundaries of how we see ourselves both in real and imagined realities. Can you tell me more about this and your specific use of symbolism?

AGYEPONG: A lot of the work is centered around pop culture references, memes, gifs and song lyrics very much present within the Black diasporic experience. For example, the triptych Anne Mae is a reference to the gif of Annalise Keating (played by Viola Davis) where she left a disrespectful conversation by rolling her eyes and taking her bag. For me especially as an actor, seeing a dark-skinned, Black woman know her worth and saying “No” unapologetically felt like something I wanted to channel for myself. The themes of the work focus on ownership, giving oneself grace and acknowledging the challenges of navigating creative spaces as a Black art maker. 

MONRO: As well as concepts of ownership and entitlement, the series explores mental wellbeing. Can you talk me through how you explored these themes through your images?

AGYEPONG: At the time of making the work, I was feeling a little lost and overwhelmed. My first major photographic series did really well (Too Many Blackamoors) but I kept being told to make work about race in a particular way. I was thinking two things: how do I make this career sustainable and survive? but how do I also retain my integrity and my intentions of making work to better understand myself? Overton Walker was the light at that moment; someone who survived and made a mark in an incredibly hostile environment where only limited embodiments of Black bodies were allowed on stage. She subverted, agitated, and pushed the boundaries of her limitations. Without figures like her, I wouldn't be where I am now. So, to honor that, I better damn well use my will as freely as possible.

 

Caucasian Chalk Circle, Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

 

Teresa Baker Weaves Visual Autofiction with Willow, Yarn & AstroTurf

Teresa Baker at Fogo Island Arts Studio, Newfoundland. Photograph by Joshua Jensen, courtesy the artist and de boer, Los Angeles.

interview by Summer Bowie

Raised nomadically along the Northern Plains of the United States, artist Teresa Baker spent her childhood shrouded in tribal storytelling. Although, it wasn’t until recently that she realized how thoroughly steeped her visual work had become in all of these inherited allegories. Working with a wide range of materials, both organic and inorganic, she weaves the fiction and nonfiction of her heritage to create works that reflect the complex nature of American tradition. Referencing artists of the abstract expressionist, cubist, and postminimalist movements in harmony with the topographical territories and utilitarian objects employed by the Indigenous nations who inform her practice, Baker imbues her works with an autonomy that allows them to be singular and timeless. In anticipation of her solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles at NADA Miami, I spoke with the artist about her unusual path into artmaking, the influence of her wide-reaching travels abroad, and the delicate balance of becoming a mother while the demand for her work has skyrocketed. 

SUMMER BOWIE: You are from the Mandan & Hidatsa tribes of North Dakota and grew up traveling throughout the national parks of the Northern Plains. How did you come to have such an unusual childhood and how did it inform your work?

TERESA BAKER: My father worked for the National Park Service, and while he held various positions over his thirty-six years there, he held the title of Superintendent when I was growing up. He was Superintendent of Little Bighorn Battlefield, Chickasaw National Recreation Area, Corps of discovery II, and Mt. Rushmore. His mission as the first American Indian Superintendent of a National Park was to bring the Native side of the story back to the parks where he worked—through public programs as well as by making permanent changes to the exhibitions within the parks. He involved the local tribes from wherever we lived. Spending my childhood not only in nature but also in sacred and historical sites, looking at educational exhibits, and listening to storytelling—this all had a major impact on my art and myself.

BOWIE: You grew up with a lot of oral storytelling. Do you see your work as a form of storytelling? 

BAKER: Only recently did I begin to see my work as a form of storytelling. For so long, I thought because my work is abstract, non-linear, non-narrative then it couldn’t be storytelling. But over the last few years, I have come to understand that my work is actually a form of storytelling on a few different levels: formally, in the way shapes, color, and textures work together to create their own language and relationships; and personally, because of my history with place and memory, and how the materials I use represent culture both traditional and contemporary. 

BOWIE: When did you realize that you wanted to go to art school and what made you choose Fordham and then later California College of the Arts for your MFA? 

BAKER: I had no idea I wanted to be an artist when I went to Fordham for undergrad. At the time, my biggest mission was to just get to NYC, and out of Nebraska where I went to high school. It wasn’t until I took an art class in college that something clicked. I then took advantage of an opportunity to study abroad at Gerrit Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam, which really solidified my interest in art. Once I returned to Fordham I changed my major to art and ended up working with incredible professors who both challenged and supported my work. After living in NYC for about four years after undergrad, I decided I needed a “proper” art school. As great as Fordham was, it was not an art school, and I wanted to take advantage of the time, facilities, and relationships that art schools offered. I also knew I did not want to stay on the east coast or apply to an east coast MFA program—so I found CCA. I was drawn to its interdisciplinary approach—an approach that resonated with my interests and practice. It ended up being a great experience and time for me and my practice. 

BOWIE: You work a lot with AstroTurf, which references grass and you create shapes that reference both hides and territories. Can you talk a little bit about your use of reference?

BAKER: For a long time, I initially talked publicly only about the formal aspects of my work, but my work has always been so personal to me. The intentions I put into it have always been hopeful, sentimental, searching, and referential. I have found that even though I have an intuitive practice, at the end of the day, I am aiming to capture the place/places where I am from. The lands where I am from and the materials I use represent so much: culture, politics, environment, relationships, and spirituality. 

BOWIE: Your work is very concerned with autonomy and power. How can a work be autonomous and what gives it power?

BAKER: For me, autonomy comes in the form of letting each piece find its own shape and take on its own compositional strategies that may not be directly referenced in the work that comes before or after it. While I stick to the same materials, and they all have the same feeling and certainly are related, I also have a hard time making the same shape over and over. If I do that, it starts to feel like a prescription, and the object doesn’t get to be singular. I can only hope the work has power—that’s the ultimate goal, and part of what keeps me making. I think power comes from a particular balance of maker and materials. And power for me is tied to what is visceral, non-static, and alive. 

 

Baker Basket, 2022
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

 

BOWIE: A few years ago you ventured into freestanding sculpture with your woven willow baskets. Can you talk about ‘burden baskets’ and the role they play in Hidatsa culture?

BAKER: I don’t make traditional burden baskets, but they are certainly the inspiration for the baskets I make now. Burden baskets are used in various ceremonial ways, one of which surrounds harvest, specifically corn ceremonies. Another role they play in our tribe is utilitarian—for hauling produce to and from our gardens. The Mandan and Hidatsa had villages on the upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota, and we had vast gardens, so the burden baskets made by and used by the women were important within daily and spiritual contexts. 

BOWIE: You’ve also considered exploring some of the clay pottery techniques that are traditional to your Mandan/Hidatsa culture. Is that something you’ve been working on?

BAKER: Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to investigate that yet—it’s a project that is still waiting. 

BOWIE: Your work has taken you all over the United States. You went from the Great Plains to New York, Texas, and California. However, in 2007, you were awarded the Susan Lipani Travel Grant, which brought you to Berlin and more recently you finished a residency at Fogo Island. How have your experiences outside of the United States informed your practice?

BAKER: They have strengthened my attachment and commitment to home, to memory, and to understanding my ties to place and community. I love to travel and explore, but I also recognize the impact of the expanse of the Northern Plains landscape—it’s a vast, quiet, and grounding place that gives a lot. My travels have all been for different reasons, and come at different points in my life. Being in residence on Fogo Island, NL for three months last summer was incredible. The island is beautiful, and living surrounded by water is not something I am used to. At the same time, in its expansiveness and movement, the sea shares a lot in common with the prairie, so I love to be an observer of that. And I love to be an observer of a new place and see how it makes its way into my work. Because my practice is largely intuitive, sometimes I don’t see how the new places come into the work until after I am done working. Oftentimes, the places stay with me for many years. 

BOWIE: You’ll be hosting a talk at NADA Miami this year to discuss how you combine modern aesthetics and materials with natural ones to create abstracted landscapes. Can you tell us how you discovered this process?

BAKER: Many years of playing with formal investigations of paint and various materials has led me to this point. I’ve delved into a variety of materials in the past ten years—like polyurethane foam, felt, wood, canvas and vinyl—always searching for the right one that would be my ground, structure, and support. I accidentally happened upon a piece of bright blue AstroTurf in Beaumont, TX while looking for other supplies, and that was the beginning of working with this unexpected material that checked all the boxes of what I was looking for, but then it also nods towards some of the larger concepts I have always been concerned with—such as land, culture, natural and artificial worlds, and fragility.

BOWIE: Can you talk about the body of work you will be presenting at your solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles for NADA Miami?

BAKER: There are a lot of new moments and investigations in this work, which I am excited about, such as new colors I don’t always work with, like red. I am having a little bit of an obsession with red. On Fogo Island there were a lot of deep oranges and reds in the rocks outside my studio, which led me down that color path. I was able to find a very vibrant, red artificial turf that I then had to contend with, excitingly. I loved the challenge of working with such a loud color. I also began working with a long-haired AstroTurf, which doesn’t interact with yarn in the same way as the shorter-haired version, but I began to cut into it to make marks. There are a lot of new subtleties I played around with, like AstroTurf on AstroTurf, and sewing the same piece of AstroTurf back together in different patterns, against its weave, to alter the background. I also collaborated with a furniture designer in Fogo Island, Cody Ramseyer, to make a table for the fair booth. The shape of the tabletop references a shape found in one of my works, and it’s made out of Ash, a species native to Canada.

BOWIE: Finally, your work has been making major waves in the past two years. You received the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, The Whitney just acquired a large piece, you had a solo exhibition at Scottsdale MoCA, and you have upcoming shows at Ballroom Marfa and the Nerman Museum. Has it been difficult to keep up with the demand?

BAKER: It’s really exciting, I am actually energized by it all, and happy my work gets to have a life outside the studio. The interesting and challenging timing of it is that I am also a new mother, and so everything you mention has coincided with me being pregnant and my first year of motherhood. I have had to be very intentional with my priorities, but I am really fortunate to have a supportive partner who goes all in and takes on the parenting and domestic responsibilities when needed. He values my practice and has an artistic background as well, so that has made all the difference because he understands what goes into art making.

Teresa Baker will be speaking about her practice on December 1 @ 3:30 PM @ NADA Miami where her solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles is on view through December 3 @ Ice Palace Studios 1400 North Miami Avenue.

Teresa Baker on Fogo Island, Newfoundland
Photograph by Joshua Jensen, courtesy the artist and de boer, Los Angeles.

A Spirit Of Generosity: An Interview Of Art Mentor Ceri Hand

Ceri Hand, Photo by Lorna Milburn


text by Lara Monro


From running a successful commercial art gallery to becoming Associate Director at Simon Lee Gallery and director of programs at Somerset House Trust, London, Ceri Hand, also known as the Artist Mentor, is championing a more holistic support framework for creative practitioners and professionals through her mentoring and coaching services. 

Lara Monro spoke with Hand about how her own experiences in the arts shaped her approach to mentoring and coaching, and why her upbringing instilled a level of responsibility in championing a more inclusive art world.  

Growing up in the Midlands, Hand was introduced to the importance of social justice and the need to support others from a young age. Her mother established and ran women's refuges and her father taught children with learning disabilities. While Hand came from a multi-racial family who combatted racism by achieving great success in business and embracing family, music and dance, she was confronted by the realities of prejudice from a young age:

As I've got older I've realised just how lucky I was to be influenced by my parents and wider extended family. From a young age there was a sense that it wasn't all about me. We would have people coming to stay all the time; my cousins, women from the refuge and their children, and all sorts of lodgers. It is interesting to reflect on my multicultural upbringing, growing up in the Midlands in the ‘70s, where riots and racism have been well documented. My uncle, who came to the UK from Jamaica when he was a kid, tackled racism by becoming a successful businessman. I was around seven when I fully understood what racism was. I was very lucky with my family, we were never made to feel different from one another. I think this also instilled a level of determination for social justice. Then of course, I began my journey into the arts where the disparities in equality and inclusion became very apparent. 

 

The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of The Black Audio Film Collective, 2007, FACT
Curated by Anjali Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, Commissioned by Ceri Hand
Photo Brian Slater, Courtesy of FACT and the artists

 

After completing an Art Foundation course in Shrewsbury and art college in Bradford, Hand co-ran an artist cooperative called Quebec Street Studios before making her way to London where she secured an internship at Make, the magazine of women’s art. It is here that she met and worked with inspirational women such as Heidi Reitmaier, Althea Greenan and Nicky Hodge who shared her enthusiasm for exciting and diverse content; 

Heidi, the editor of Make was from Canada and really wasn't bogged down by the nonsense of the North/South divide or class systems in the UK. Coming from the Midlands, this meant a lot. The team were also amazing in how they championed women artists, such as Alexis Hunter, Maud Sulter and Sonia Boyce, who at the time had not yet been recognized for their incredible talent. Boyce was the first Black woman to represent Britain at the the Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion and she was notably represented by Simon Lee Gallery. 

Hand’s determination to showcase talent more representative of modern Britain continued throughout her roles in both the commercial and public art worlds. In 2007, when working as Director of Exhibitions at FACT Liverpool, Hand commissioned The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar) to curate the exhibition THE GHOSTS OF SONGS: A Retrospective on the Black Audio Film Collective 1982 - 1998 (touring to Arnolfini Gallery). Designed by David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates, it was the first retrospective to explore the significance of BAFC’s entire body of work exploring the personal and political in a new kind of international, experimental moving image work. 

The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of The Black Audio Film Collective, 2007, FACT
Curated by Anjali Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, Commissioned by Ceri Hand
Photo Brian Slater, Courtesy of FACT and the artists

That exhibition was one of my proudest moments at FACT. Not only was it the first time the seven-person strong collective were given an institutional show, I  also worked with John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, and David Lawson on placing several works in the Tate collection, another first for a Black collective. Managing to bring Liverpool University Press on board as a partner to fund the book Ghosts of Songs, beautifully edited by Kodwo and Anjalika, including essays by Jean Fisher, Kobena Mercer and Okwui Enwezor, was also a huge moment in the realignment of understanding how Black archives were essential to readdressing history. At the time, it didn't seem like a major milestone, it felt like an amazing part of the job, but on reflection it was a big deal.  

Hand’s working relationship with the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC) didn't end there. In 2019, when director of programs at Somerset House, she commissioned Zak Ové to curate the landmark exhibition Get Up Stand Up Now featuring a showreel of pioneering works by BAFC. The exhibition spanned art, film, photography, music, literature, design and fashion, celebrating fifty years of Black creativity in Britain and beyond. Through cultural exchanges and collaborations across the African diaspora, trailblazing creatives such as Armet Francis, Dennis Bovell, Althea McNish and Horace Ové were acknowledged for their commitment to changing the consciousness of British society. These themes extended out from the galleries into the courtyard, through a stand-out Summer Series of performances and Film 4 Summer Screen line-ups. The exhibition was designed by award-winning Yinka Ilori and Horace Ové received an OBE in 2021, for his contribution to film.

The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of The Black Audio Film Collective, 2007, FACT
Curated by Anjali Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, Commissioned by Ceri Hand
Photo Brian Slater, Courtesy of FACT and the artists

While Hand is grateful for the opportunities she has had to work with inspiring creative agents of change, she is also transparent about her personal battles, including the loss of her father, an uncompromising workload and gender prejudice, all of which over time resulted in serious health issues. After much research and exploration into different therapeutic options, Hand is a fervent champion of seeking out help and support at every stage of our lives, from therapy to coaching:

Back when I was pursuing my career, we dealt with the challenges of a heavy workload and daily casual sexism by working even harder and adopting a mask. I now understand what impact these forms of structural racism, sexism and classism had on me, my friends, peers, and my family. Now, I understand how the body keeps the score. It all makes much more sense. On reflection, I didn't get the support I needed. I would get sick so often; the physical side of my trauma presented itself as glandular fever and chronic fatigue syndrome. 

Navigating her varied roles and personal battles whilst working in the arts, Hand began to recognize the lack of support systems available for creative professionals and artists: 

I’d worked so hard, so relentlessly for so many years, then after a major, life-threatening accident in 2019, I suddenly realized I had been working against my nature and was on top of the wrong mountain. Having an understanding of the amazing jobs that so many commercial galleries do for their artists, combined with the support that public commissioning bodies offer, I had a range and depth of insight into the fundamental support that is missing for so many of us in the creative sector.

Since 2020, Hand has supported thousands of creatives through mentoring and coaching services, her free newsletter, Beat the Block, delivering coaching support direct to people's inboxes, free monthly In Conversation events with established creative professionals and her blog, Elevation, aimed at demystifying the arts and lifting others up.

Fresh Trauma, Ceri Hand Gallery, London, 2013, Co-curated with Rebecca Lennon

In December this year, Hand will launch her new self-study digital course, How to Price and Sell Your Work: 5 steps to successful sales, for artists who want to earn a living doing what they love.

And in January, she will launch a new online coaching program and community platform for mid-career artists. For Hand, it is about creating an ecosystem where she can use her expertise and that of her associates to nurture an international community of artists and creatives who feel fully supported as they navigate their journey, be it for creative or professional development purposes:  

I want to encourage a spirit of generosity to combat the market driven meritocracy. I believe that everybody makes an important contribution, so I want to harness the community we’ve already built and champion a holistic approach to supporting creatives. You don't have to ruin yourself mentally and physically to have a successful career. Shifting how we think of ourselves, what we are capable of, and taking time to zoom out to acknowledge our own needs is necessary. I want to work with individuals to help them think about how we can change thought patterns and form new habits. But ultimately, I believe that creatives make the world a better place. We need them now more than ever to help us come up with creative solutions and to help us find joy along the way.

Ceri Hand, Photo by Lorna Milburn

Daniel Richter: A Very Boring Dream Come True

Daniel Richter
Fun de Siecle
2002
Oil on Canvas
115.75 x 151.18 inches (294 x 384 cm)


interview by Oliver Kupper


Artist Daniel Richter cut his teeth designing music posters and album covers in the antifascist, squatter punk scene of Hamburg in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now based in Berlin, the spirit of rebellion is wielded by the knife blade of his paintbrush in works that cross violently across the threshold between abstraction and figuration. With inspiration from early French symbolists, his work holds a mirror to a society pervaded by chaos and perversity. His show, Limbo, which coincides with the 59th Biennale di Venezia, was presented in a palazzo where a Catholic brotherhood once provided spiritual benediction to those sentenced to brutal public executions. Today marks the opening of his solo exhibition, Furor II, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. We caught up with Richter while he was on vacation in Trieste, Italy where an oligarch’s seized Philippe Starck-designed superyacht was moored just outside his hotel window. 

OLIVER KUPPER: As someone who grew up in a Germany divided by communism and capitalism, can you talk a little bit about this and how it influenced your work?

DANIEL RICHTER: My work is based on only one belief system, and that's the church of painting (laughs). Growing up in Cold War Western Europe in the northern German countryside meant that you were embedded in a welfare system that guaranteed education, a higher level of consumption, social security, pension funds and, at least for the white working class, the promise of leaving its class behind. During the Cold War, the communists had to prove that they were guaranteeing a better, more just life than capitalism, but they didn't. Both are installed narratives, but capitalism has won.  And the culture we all participate in is like a big blob of oil drifting in an ocean of shit, and both are not mingling. The promise of this constant cultural production offers the poor the promise that if they only try hard enough, they’ll make it, they will be able to participate. But that pile of shit, that huge ocean of misery, depression, exploitation, and materialistic promises is not gonna go away just because you finally can afford a Rolex. A very boring dream came not true. The idea or belief that life could be fair and everybody should have the same rights and the same benefits has sadly nearly completely vanished.

KUPPER: In Europe, and around the world, there’s a growing xenophobia just under the surface and I think your paintings started to explore this shortly after 9/11. 

RICHTER: Yes, for sure. Xenophobia, such a noble word for racism! I find it interesting that those nationalists and racists find their counterpart in the Islamists, the same idealization and hatred towards women, that whole idea of a dumb, violent patriarchal system. When 9/11 happened, it could have been way worse if they had been thinking in military terms. They could have bombed atomic power plants. Instead they bombed the Twin Towers as a symbolic castration of the West’s finest power symbols. It’s a war against women, a war against softness or weakness. It’s a war against reason and reflection. It's a war for dumb guys believing in lord penis, in guns and violence, and all that kind of paranoid, fascist, megalomanic power scheisse. And it's always “the nation” or “righteous path” or “the glorious past.” And in a weird way, they won, because you could say that Trump, or Putin, or Bolsanaro are all perverted, Christian versions of these extreme Islamic beliefs. It’s weird, this dialectical hop that the whole thing took in the years after 9/11. Invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and then the engagement in Syria—all in the name of democracy and women's rights with the result of not liberating one woman, but incarcerating all of them. I always wonder why nobody talks about the flourishing American economy under the auspice of homeland security. The military machine is an absolutely idiotic, counterproductive system. All these combinations just build up so much anger, frustration, and depression.  

 

Daniel Richter
Amsterdam
2001
Oil on Canvas
88.58 x 57.87 inches (225 x 147 cm)

 

KUPPER: It definitely seems like we're on a path to some kind of collapse.

RICHTER: On the other hand, darkness is huge and your little iPhone lamp is small, but also when night is the deepest, dawn is the nearest. I don't know—how did we get into this topic? Oh yeah, my paintings—my paintings are beautiful and colorful, by the way.

KUPPER: Art is a good way of synthesizing these ideas. Like the work of Francis Bacon, who people compare your work to—the zeitgeist of war, by osmosis, embeds itself into the artist’s psyche. 

RICHTER: I understand why people make that relation to Bacon, but it was accidental. I think it has to do with those images I made that focused on WWI cripples—guys that lost their legs in combat and are on crutches looking like sad insects. And the squeezing and banding of those figures, combined with the flatness of the backdrop, the aggressiveness and the softness of the bodies—the stress and tension somehow forced itself into an architecture superficially similar to Bacon. But his bodies were isolated and under observation in an empty theater. In my work, the space itself pushes the figures. I never really liked Bacon that much, though—not a lot of humor in it. I gained more from late 19th-century French painting because it’s so beautiful and bourgeois, and so distant from my thinking. Before the first World War, art was more optimistic and also already influenced by different cultural and technological sources, from African sculpture to Japanese woodcuts, and from lithography to photography. I think comic books were for me what photography was for them. And then, there was the whole thing about the possibilities and opportunities of the brush and the material of paint itself. These ideas in those days were like promises of an unknown land, that bland is now discovered and mapped, but I like to pretend it’s not. Sounds nostalgic, I know.

KUPPER: Going back to comic books and your upbringing making art for album covers and posters, can you talk a little bit about how you got into working within the music scene?

RICHTER: In the early ‘80s, late ‘70s, when I was young, punk was the way out. So, I moved to Hamburg. Hamburg was a city with lots of squatters and a red light district with a certain underground appeal. I couldn't make music and I didn't want to make music because you have to rehearse with others, which is how I realized I could draw. So, that was the natural role the subculture chose for me. 

© Daniel Richter, Courtesy Regen Projects

© Daniel Richter, Courtesy Regen Projects

KUPPER: What was the visual language that you were pulling from when you were making these album covers?

RICHTER: I would say somewhere between Raymond Pettibon, Charles Burns, and the work Ub Iwerks did for Disney. But also, John Heartfield, George Grosz, that kind of Dada influence. In those days, information was rare, so it was gathered at record stores, in fanzines, and at concerts. And there was also Linder, who designed the Buzzcocks’ seven inch, Orgasm Addict. And all the Crass records—the idea of having an anarchist collective designing a whole identity for a band and accidentally becoming the role model for millions of idiot punk bands afterwards is quite funny. If there was a band I really liked and they appealed to me, I would do artwork for them, and if somebody needed a poster for an antifascist action concert, I would also do that. I have an antifascist background, so I would design posters and t-shirts for demonstrations etc. You just steal from everybody—it’s very simple. 

KUPPER: How did you get involved in the antifascist movement?

RICHTER: There was a  squatting scene in Hamburg in the mid-’80s, but there was also a huge right wing hooligan scene and regular trouble with fascists and skinheads at concerts. Hamburg was also the home of the militant neo-fascist movement in Germany. So, at some point, we had to turn to self-defense. I mean, all over Germany, generally all over the world, every city has its underground where the outcasts hang out, but every city also has this right wing, macho culture that aims their anger at a perceived enemy. Throughout the ‘20s in Germany, there were a lot of working class, self-defense movements against the Nazis, like the Antifaschistische Aktion.  

KUPPER: Did you ever experiment with psychedelics when you were that age?

RICHTER: The only drug I really recommend, also because it does the least harm to mankind and those producing and distributing it, is LSD. I think LSD is a great drug. It’s very fascinating to watch your brain connecting thoughts, feelings and observations, and structuring the world as a constant ornament in very complex layers, and also leaving your body behind, or intensifying its tactility is a life-changing experience. Weird, that even this drug is nowadays used as a self-optimizing tool.

Daniel Richter
Bill
2015
Oil on Canvas
78.74 x 106.3 inches (200 x 270 cm)

KUPPER: People have described your work as psychedelic, would you say that’s correct? 

RICHTER: For some of the work, I think it fits well. Some of the early, non-figurative, abstract work was definitely a way of getting the complexity of psychedelics together with chaos theory and the looming of the world wide web, you could say. Digital tools in the early ‘90s were promising as a means to change the world for the better … but that just transformed into a huge pile of really shitty flyers for techno raves. 

KUPPER: In the early 2000s, you had this really interesting exploration in the figurative works of riots: people in riot gear, sexuality and pornography, the rise of the internet being this primary driver of technology. Can you talk a little bit about these thematic explorations—the rise in tribalism and militarism?

RICHTER: I just got bored doing the psychedelic thing. I had been searching for something and I found it—mission accomplished. The paintings were surprising to me because they tried to elaborate chaotic structures that asked, “When is too much too much? And what kind of structure is underneath? Are there secret patterns that we do not recognize at first glance?” It was about deciphering chaos. Also, it was fun trying to squeeze in everything I could think of. And then, I thought it was interesting to shift into the opposite direction, which was looking at representation, politics, history, and the world that surrounds me. I can claim to be the first artist who focused on Al Qaeda in his work. On the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I made a painting that looked like a mix of the Passion Of Christ and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the manner of a psychedelic [Emil] Nolde, but was actually based on the Al Qaeda bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi. The circumstances under which it was shown blurred the reception. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union are the reason for the reappearance of religions and nationalism haunting us today. So sad.

Daniel Richter
Phienox
2000
Oil on Canvas
99.21 x 144.88 inches (252 x 368 cm)

KUPPER: I want to talk about your show Limbo that was on view in Venice. Can you tell me about the show and the history of the building [Scuola Grande di San Fantin] that the exhibition is in?

RICHTER: It is a building where for a couple hundred years a Catholic fraternity begged God for forgiveness for prisoners sentenced to death. But begging forgiveness did not mean that they would be guaranteed direct access to heaven, or protect you from hell. Once you gave them your money, they would only guarantee that you would end up in in Limbo after death, which is like a waiting room where your fate is not very clear. So, after you got sentenced to death, the fraternity took the sentenced under its wing. On the day of your execution, dressed like the Ku Klux Klan, but in all black, they would wave buckets of ember, sing in praise of the Lord, and beg forgiveness for the poor sinner. At the first stop of that walk, the hands were cut off in public and people would cheer in joy (laughs). And then, a doctor would cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding. After that, they put your hands on a chain and hung them around your neck. Afterwards, they would walk you another 500 meters to cut off your ears and nose, and rip out your tongue—all while you are still alive. And at the end of that long march ending at San Marco, you would either get skinned alive or torn into four pieces by horses. One aristocrat got sentenced to death because he cursed Mother Mary after losing a poker game. He was at the wrong party at the wrong time. So, the mood of the building is somber. And I thought, that's a great place for my work, because my work is also about Limbo, planet Earth is Limbo. All paintings are based on just one postcard of two men that had lost their legs in 1916. I had never done that before, focusing on only one image. But It liberated me from the force to establish a narrative myself, since the inherent drama is already there. It was the absolute naivety of millions of people entering the first World War—really believing it would be over in four weeks. Matter of fact, it lasted four years, and for some it lasted a hundred, and since they didn’t know better, they may have even liked it, but I doubt that. Anyway, I am happily swinging my brush and spatel knife, drifting on and in my little blob of oil, drifting in an ocean of endless opportunities that smells rather rancid.

KUPPER: It's a dark prospect, but true. And the way artists operate on the outside of that is very interesting. 

RICHTER: It sounds bitter, which maybe has to do with the fact that I’m on holiday and I have too much time on my hands. Honestly, a lot of cultural production is really interesting and is one of the pillars that hope can be based on. Aside from mainstream media culture, I think there's a lot of stuff that is very interesting, very honest, very touching. It makes me learn, and think, and consider beliefs, and rethink old habits. How do we get out of the bog? It's easy to be cynical or sound a radical critic of culture—it's much harder to be humanistic. 

KUPPER: Your show at Regen Projects. Can you talk a little bit about that show?

RICHTER: I am just following the trail I laid out. Some of the paintings may be good, some may even be better. We’ll see.

KUPPER: So, you’re in Limbo again. 

Daniel Richter: Furor II is on view through December 23 @ Regen Projects 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles

Daniel Richter
Punktum
2002
Oil on Canvas
78.74 x 118.11 inches (200 x 300 cm)